TICK TOCK THE CLIMATE CLOCK – PART FORTY-ONE

That's the Greek island of Evia, above and on fire.  And here is a video of that fire taken from a ferry boat sheltering residents and tourists. https://twitter.com/i/status/1423778633982914564.  

This is our present, but this is also our future.

By now, you’ve probably read or heard about the sobering Sixth Assessment Report from Working Group I of the United Nations' International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was published on Monday.  The peer-reviewed report was conducted by 234 authors from 66 countries who examined more than 14,000 studies.  You can read the full report here:  https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/ , but I recommend either the Summary for Policy Makers (a tab in the Report), this New York Times summary, this article from the Washington Post, or this brief outline from Axios.

(SSP stands for Shared Socioeconomic Pathways in the IPCC Report; the lower the number, the lower the greenhouse gas emissions.) 

Here are some key take-aways from the IPCC Report, some of which are noted in WRI Summary (great charts and graphics!): 

• ·       Humans have already heated the planet by roughly 1.1 degrees Celsius (1.98 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial levels.

• ·       Even if all nations worldwide sharply cut emissions starting today, total global warming will increase to around 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) within the next two decades, possibly by the early 2030’s; meaning 1.5 is already fully baked into our future.

• ·       What happens at 1.5 degrees of increased warming?

o   Nearly 1 billion people will face more frequent life-threatening heat waves.

o   Hundreds of millions will face severe droughts.

o   Some animal and plant species will become extinct.

o   Coral reefs that sustain global fisheries will suffer more frequent mass die-offs.

o   Extreme weather events will significantly increase.

• ·       What happens if we continue “business as usual?”

o   The world could warm by 3 or 4 degrees Celsius or, under a high-emissions scenario, by up to 5.7 degrees Celsius (10.3 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100.

o   The world has not experienced global warming by more than 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial levels in more than 2 million years.

o   There were no human beings on the planet 2 million years ago; we are truly in uncharted territory.

That's the Dixie Fire above, the second largest wildfire in California history, and the drought-stricken Oroville Dam  in California--August 2021 top; August 2020 below.

So now what?  We know that climate change creates anxiety.  (For more on that, see the video embedded in the Washington Post.)  But despair is not the answer and giving up would be catastrophic.  We cannot allow fear to freeze us into inaction, because action, immediate and worldwide, is the only thing left for us.  All we can do now is everything we possibly can do to not make the impact of climate change worse than it already is.

So what would "doing everything possible" look like?  This is where it gets even more sobering, but not impossible, as those who have contributed to or commented on the IPCC Report emphasize. 

Working Group I of the IPCC does not make policy recommendations.  That is the job of Working Group III, whose report will not issue until 2022.  In the meantime, though, here is what the World Resources Institute (WRI) thinks is the “immediate worldwide action” that needs to be taken (see WRI Assessment) (emphasis added):

To keep the window open to limit global warming to 1.5 C, countries need to accelerate transformation towards a net-zero emissions future across all sectors at a far faster pace than recent trends, according to this report from World Resources Institute and ClimateWorks Foundation, with input from Climate Action Tracker.*

For example, the report finds that to get on track for the emission cuts required by 2030, the world needs to:

·       Accelerate the increased share of renewables in electricity generation five times faster;

·       Phase out coal in electricity generation five times faster;

·       Reduce the carbon intensity of electricity generation three times faster;

·       Accelerate the uptake of electric vehicles 22 times faster than the significant rates of adoption in recent years;

·       Accelerate the increase in the share of low-carbon fuels by eight times faster; and

·       Accelerate the increase in annual tree cover gain five times faster.

The rapid transformation needed to halve emissions by 2030 will require significant financial investments, technology transfer and capacity-building for developing countries. While climate finance has increased significantly in recent years across the public, private and philanthropic sectors, it is still not at the scale needed to revolutionize our energy and transportation systems, accelerate energy efficiency and protect forests. Estimates indicate that between $1.6 and $3.8 trillion per year will be needed through 2050 to transform the energy system alone.

https://twitter.com/Sotiridi1/status/1423778633982914564?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1423778633982914564%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=httaand if the drastic paring down of the climate measures proposed by the Biden Administration in the bipartisan infrastructure bill portend similar reductions in the reconciliation bill, nd if the paring down pand the drastic paring back of the climate initiatives in the bipartisan infrastructure bill are (one fifth of what the Biden Administration proposed)s%3A%2F%2Fwww.insider.com%2Fwatch-video-shows-fire-raging-greek-island-people-look-on-2021-8Daunting, but not impossible, and we’ll have to wait and see if Working Group III has a rosier (hopefully not darker) outlook.  But either way, if the Covid vaccine global distribution to developing countries is any indication, the going will be rough, mean-spirited, very expensive, and slow.  That’s unfortunate, because by killing time, we risk killing ourselves and other living things around us.   

Keep it real!  And wear your damn mask!

Marilyn

 

 

 

 

 

 

*(WRI is a non-profit global research organization founded in 1982 and funded by the MacArthur Foundation.  ClimateWorks is a San Francisco-based non-profit founded in 2008 and funded by the Hewlett & Packard Foundation and the McKnight Foundation.  Climate Action Tracker is an English-language website established in 2008 that shows what global warming is expected by the end of the century; it is financed by the European Climate Foundation.)