TICK TOCK THE CLIMATE CLOCK - PART TWENTY-SEVEN

Geraniums in January!?  

A Berlin nighttime temperature of 10°C. at 10:35 p.m. on January 8, 2020!?  That’s  50°F. and the same temperature as in Rome on the same date.  Welcome to the new normal. 

I published Part One of Tick Tock the Climate Clock on March 3, 2019.  Here is the opening sentence:

Does anybody really know what time it is?  Is it five minutes to Midnight or five minutes past?

Based on what’s happened—or not happened—on the climate crisis front, I’d say we’ve either moved closer to Midnight or farther past it.  Let's take a look at a summary of the climate news from the last decade, and then you be the judge.

This article from HuffPost (HuffPost 7 Numbers) ticks off seven statistics that show how dire the climate emergency became over the last decade:

• The past five years were the hottest ever recorded on the planet

• Four of the five largest California wildfires happened in the last decade

• There were six Category 5 hurricanes in the Atlantic in the past four years

• There was a 13% reduction in Arctic sea ice in the last decade

• Floods with a 0.1% chance of happening in any given year (a “1 in 1000 years” event) became a frequent occurrence

• There were more than 100 “billion dollar” climate disasters, twice as many as in the preceding decade

• The world pumped a record 40.5 billion tons of CO2 into the air in 2019 alone, exceeding a record high set in 2018

All of which is to say that we wasted precious time:

According to a study of the so-called emissions gap ― a marker of the difference between the amount of planet-heating gases countries have agreed to cut and where the current projections are headed ― global temperatures are on pace to rise as much as 3.2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels by the end of the century. That’s more than double what scientists project is enough warming to cause irreversible damage to the planet.

This second article from HuffPost (HuffPost Lost Decade) catalogues events which led the publication to call 2009 – 2019 “the lost decade.”  Here are the lowlights:

In December 2009, 110 heads of state, along with thousands of activists, scientists, business leaders, celebrities and indigenous people, met in Copenhagen for the annual climate conference, hoping to agree on stabilizing greenhouse gas emissions. The talks broke up acrimoniously after two weeks. 

In December 2015, a universal agreement was reached to keep global temperature increases “well below” 2 C. and to “endeavor to limit them to 1.5 C.” This was the Paris Agreement and the emissions targets were voluntary.  Nevertheless, President Donald Trump announced the US, the second biggest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, will withdraw from the Agreement in November 2020. 

This summer, Brazilian President Bolsonaro encouraged deforestation and burning of the Amazon rain forest.

In Australia, the world’s largest coal exporter, Prime Minister Scott Morrison sought to criminalize climate protests, even as the continent went up in flames. 

In October 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that the Paris targets were not ambitious enough and keeping temperature rises to 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels would mean “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.”

The end of the decade saw three devastating climate reports: 

    

·         The Production Gap Report revealed that the world was planning to produce about 50% more fossil fuels in 2030 than would be consistent with limiting warming to 2 C, and 120% more than would be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 C.  

·         A report by the World Meteorological Organization showed the concentration of greenhouse gases had hit a new record high in 2018, with no sign of a slowdown. 

·         The U.N.’s Emissions Gap Report warned that even if countries met all their 2015 pledges (unlikely), we could expect a 3.2 C temperature rise by the end of the century. This would make much more of the world unlivable, with hotter, deadlier heatwaves, with more frequent floods, droughts, and crop failures.

 

COP25, the 25^th annual climate conference held in December of this year in Madrid, ended not with a bang, but with a whimper.  The US, Australia, and Brazil blocked methodologies for calculating carbon taxes and offsets and blocked compensation to developing countries striving to meet their Paris Agreement emissions targets.  China and India refused even to consider strengthening their targets.  As a spokesman for the pressure group 350.org, said: 

The level of disconnect between what this COP should have delivered and what it’s on track to deliver is appalling and is a sign that the very foundations of the Paris agreement are being shaken up.  A handful of loud countries has hijacked the process and is keeping the rest of the planet hostage.

Tick tock.  The climate clock is ticking like a time bomb.   11°C. at mid-afternoon today, January 9th in Berlin.  And we've yet to see a single snowflake this winter.

The UN Gap Emissions Report made it clear that, in order to stay within 1.5°C., the entire world must reduce emissions by 55% by 2030.  That means a 7.5% reduction every year for the next decade, starting NOW.  That means ending fossil fuel subsidies, which as the IMF reported, governments have subsidized by trillions of dollars over the past decade.  It means counter-spending the billions of dollars the fossil fuel industry has spent lobbying against any reduction in their output.  It means voting climate-denying politicians out of office at every level of government.  It means investing in every promising climate mitigation technology out there.  It means acting, not just talking.  And if that means taking to the streets in self-defense, so be it.  

I love geraniums, just not in January.

Keep it real!

Marilyn