What needs to be done to avert a global climate disaster?

When Hurricane Ian hit Florida and Cuba a few days ago, it gave scientists and activists another attention-grabbing moment to tell people that climate change was already having a deadly effect on their lives. Scenes of death and devastation from a Category 4 hurricane in one of America’s favorite holiday states forced politicians and policymakers to confront its weak climate record. Scientists everywhere see governments and leaders doing almost nothing when danger has hit the door.

It is a tool ratified by almost all countries to prevent dangerous climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions in a phased manner. Paris Agreement below United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The 2015 agreement is now in its pivotal decade of action. Its key goals are clear – first, to limit the increase in average global temperature to 1.5 °C by the end of the century, and at least keep it below 2 °C; And second, to achieve the climax of man-made emissions as soon as possible. However, individual national pledges of member states do not have the finer details about how they will achieve net zero emissions by the middle of the century.

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The Paris process thus includes a timeline of actions that countries have agreed upon, and is the next big item on the Global Stocktake agenda for 2023. This will be further strengthened by the submission of a Synthesis Report on the Science of Climate Change, the Sixth Assessment Report, by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

the cost of political turmoil

Stocktec’s path has been marked by political turmoil in some countries. This threatens to upset progress toward reducing carbon emissions, a prime example of which was the US’s hostile stance under the Donald Trump administration (2017-21) towards climate science and emissions reduction. The echo is still felt today, and US agencies are facing judicial hurdles to enforce regulations on carbon emissions reduction.

In June, the US Environmental Protection Agency was blocked by the nation’s Supreme Court from regulating emissions from energy in a case filed by the state of West Virginia. The successes achieved by ultra-conservative politicians in Italy and Britain threaten to slow the pace of cutting greenhouse gas emissions. The International Energy Agency says 2021 saw its biggest absolute annual increase in carbon dioxide emissions of 2 billion tonnes, making it clear the post-COVID recovery was hardly green.

The danger from such regression is Paris Agreement Progress, while the amount of GHG that Earth can possibly accommodate, before average temperatures rise to extremely dangerous levels – that is, more than 2 °C – remains limited. The 2020 IPCC assessment states that the global carbon budget, which is the amount of greenhouse gases that can still be emitted to meet the Paris targets, for 1.5°C is estimated to be 400 gigatonnes of CO2 (GtCO2) and For 2 degrees is 1,150 Gtco2. A 67% probability – and 300 GtCO2 and 900 GtCO2, respectively, with an 83% probability.

important question

Against this backdrop of political uncertainty, there is a lack of clarity on whether emerging economies can adopt appropriate technologies to reduce emissions and obtain sufficient funding to adapt to the effects of climate change. The UNFCCC is using a structured approach for member countries to document their actions for the Global Stocktake. The questions it has sent ask, what collective progress has been made towards achieving the temperature targets in the Paris Agreement, what specific action needs to be taken, what obstacles and challenges exist? Similar questions are asked on adaptation, finance flows, technology development and transfer, equality in national climate action and human rights and steps to prevent damage to the natural environment.

Global stocktake is a great opportunity for emerging economies and least developed countries to call rich countries into account, because the current effects of climate are largely due to the stock of CO2 in the atmosphere that they have emitted since the Industrial Revolution. . There is also frustration among scientists that the constraintist climate politics played by wealthy nations is not making a comeback with ongoing climate impacts: warming oceans, rising sea levels and threats to significant glaciers in Greenland and the West Antarctic. These can send the world into uncharted territory because tipping points are exceeded.

The IPCC synthesis report on national pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions shows that at current rates, carbon emissions could increase by 16% over 2010 levels by 2030. The latest findings indicate that such an increase could lead to a temperature increase of about 2.7 °C by the end of the century, with disastrous consequences.

There is also the fear of bad climate events, that too more often. Climatologist James Hansen and his colleagues at the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) predicted in September that 2024 is poised to be the hottest year on record, “off the charts”, expected to set during an El Nio . 2023 after a gap of few years. This has implications for all associated aspects such as glacier health, sea level rise, sea surface temperature and biodiversity health. A warmer atmosphere retains more water vapor, and when moving to cooler regions, dumps vast amounts of precipitation. Sinking Indian cities are now a familiar sight.

Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, reported five years ago that on average, for every one degree Celsius of ocean surface warming, the wind speed of major storms can be expected to increase by about 28 km per hour. Is. Their destructive power also increases significantly.

Another high-level scientific report, written after the Paris Agreement came into force, is the Dasgupta Review by Cambridge economist Partha Dasgupta on the Economics of Biodiversity. His commission’s accounting suggests that factors affecting climate systems, such as forests, rivers, water bodies and the life forms that sustain them, should be treated as public goods because they play an important role in .

Reducing the damage caused by climate change and loss of biodiversity “is akin to the production of a public good, which is neither a competitor (access to a public good by one group of people has no effect on the quantity available to the others). is not excluded (no one can be kept out of reach of the good)”, they say in the report. The factors that help regulate the climate must be secured as global public goods.

compensation claim

Scientifically assessing the contribution of natural resources will help countries including India to claim special compensation for these public goods – Western Ghats, Northeast Forests, Himalayan glaciers, river systems etc. With such compensation Brazil should stop deforestation in the Amazon, an important monsoon and climate regulator, and also save forests in Southeast Asia.

One question that is bound to arise around the 2023 Global Stocktake is how emerging economies should align their policies on energy, buildings, transportation, water use, agriculture and soil conservation, waste management and urbanization at the most decentralized level of cities and towns. commitment to do. For climate requirements in line with the UNFCCC Charter. This means that rich countries help them do this and do more themselves. So far, this has not happened, as there is no climate audit for every policy measure, and the long-term carbon intensive lock-in effects will continue to be felt.

Increasing tax on carbon pollutants?

The US recently passed the Inflation Reduction Act, providing $370 billion to move, among other things, away from fossil fuels, into solar and wind power. But Prof. Hansen describes it as insignificant, being a burden on future generations. They have argued that increasing taxes on carbon pollutants is needed to eliminate the use of fossil fuels.

, G Ananthakrishnan is a Chennai based journalist,