Our slowness to act to tackle the climate crisis is undermining our chances of limiting warming to a viable threshold, but also our ability to adapt to a climate that has already changed a lot, warns the Group of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in a new report. This synthesis also underlines that the actions taken during the present decade will influence the next millennia.
The window that would allow us to contain climate change at the threshold considered viable of 1.5°C “is rapidly closing”, can we read in the summary published on Monday, after intense negotiations by the 195 member countries of the IPCC. “The choices and actions implemented during the decade will have impacts now and for thousands of years,” insist the authors of the document, which is the first comprehensive IPCC report since the signing of the Paris.
The figures compiled by the scientists also give the measure of the challenge. Annual global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are 50% higher today than 30 years ago and of the 2.4 trillion tonnes historically attributable to human activity, more than 40% of emissions have been produced over the past three decades.
Result: CO concentration2 in the atmosphere is breaking records year after year and global warming is very likely to reach 1.5°C, compared to the pre-industrial era, “in the short term”. In this context, “all regions of the world are expected to face increasing climate threats” to humans and the ecosystems that make life on Earth possible.
The list of such threats includes but is not limited to rising deadly heat waves, melting glaciers, acidification and rising ocean levels, reduced access to water, flooding, spread of disease, decline in food production and psychological distress. Not to mention the tens of millions of climate refugees predicted over the next few decades.
Multiple risks
All of these risks will increase if we fail to limit the rise in average temperature to 1.5°C, which is the most ambitious objective of the Paris Agreement. “With further warming, climate change will become more and more complex and difficult to manage”, predicts the IPCC, insisting on the possibility of seeing cascading effects appear, particularly in the field of food production.
Climate change also accentuates “the risk of species extinction” and “the irreversible loss of biodiversity”. And beyond a rise of 2°C, the ice of Greenland and part of that of Antarctica will be lost, which should cause a marked rise in the level of the oceans. Warm-water corals, which account for nearly 30% of marine species, will be doomed. However, specifies the IPCC, the commitments made by the States are likely to lead us to a rise which could reach 3.2°C over the next decades.
To hope to change trajectory, scientists say that everything must be done not to exceed 1.5°C. This would mean capping global emissions by 2025, at the latest, and then reducing them by at least 43% by 2030, compared to 2019 levels.
Humanity must therefore respect what is left of its “carbon budget” and which we are burning very quickly, due to our dependence on fossil fuels. The report states that in the absence of immediate and ambitious measures to reduce GHG emissions, the budget that gives us a 50% chance of not exceeding 1.5°C will be virtually exhausted by 2030.
Proof of the weight of fossil fuels in climate change, the emissions linked to existing projects or those in preparation could be enough on their own to achieve a warming of 2°C.
Despite the urgency specified a little more in each IPCC report, public and private funds dedicated to fossil fuels are always higher than those planned for the fight against the climate crisis and adaptation to its impacts. For the year 2022, the International Energy Agency has estimated that subsidies to fossil resources exceeded 1000 billion dollars.
Transformations
The summary document published on Monday therefore identifies several measures to be implemented quickly to move towards the overall objective of carbon neutrality by 2050. The transformation of the energy sector is obviously a priority to turn away from oil, natural gas and coal, which still account for more than 80% of the global energy mix, and deploy renewable energies.
The report also highlights the need to rethink cities to focus in particular on densification, greening, but also the development of public and active transportation. Reducing food waste is also necessary, as well as transforming our diet and shifting towards “sustainable” agriculture. Scientists are also calling for the protection of 30% to 50% of the planet’s natural ecosystems and for an international strategy to curb deforestation, particularly in tropical forests, which are important carbon sinks.
But raising ambition in terms of reducing GHG emissions and protecting natural carbon sinks will not be enough, underlines the IPCC report. In a context where up to 3.6 billion human beings live in a region “highly vulnerable” to the impacts of global warming, it is imperative to accelerate the implementation of adaptation measures. These simply do not measure up to what is needed to enable us to limit the impacts of rising temperatures, the scientists note.
“Financial flows for adaptation are insufficient”, recalls the report, adding that the most significant delays particularly affect developing countries, which are moreover very often at the forefront of the impacts of the crisis. But the worst is yet to come. “With increasing global warming, loss and damage will increase and some natural and human systems will reach the limit of their adaptive capacity.” Beyond a warming of 1.5°C, challenges are expected in particular for the supply of drinking water for several regions of the world, but also for different ecosystems.
Fossil fuels
For Greenpeace, this new report should serve as a warning to governments, like that of Canada, which continue to authorize new projects for the exploitation and export of oil and natural gas. “The time has come for them to start holding companies accountable and making them pay for the loss and damage they cause. There are many solutions to act against the climate crisis and the time has come to deploy it bluntly. This report is a real action plan for humanity and one of the last exit doors available to us to build a fairer and safer world”, argues its head of the climate and energy campaign, Patrick Bonin.
“This report highlights the urgency of taking more ambitious action. If we act now, we can secure a more sustainable future,” IPCC Chairman Hoesung Lee summed up on Monday. At the same time, he recalled that nearly eight years after the signing of the Paris Climate Agreement, global emissions are still growing and global warming has already exceeded 1.1°C. This rise in global temperatures has already caused “increasingly dangerous impacts in all regions of the world”, including deadly extreme weather events.
And since the poorest citizens of the planet are also those who suffer the most from the impacts of the climate crisis, it becomes crucial to speak of “climate justice”, according to Aditi Mukherji, one of the 93 authors of the summary report. This document is notably used as a scientific reference within the framework of the UN climate negotiations.
The next conference on this subject, COP28, is chaired by Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, who is also the CEO of Abu Dhabi National Oil, one of the largest oil companies in the world.