Today, the IPCC publishes the third and final part of its Sixth Assessment Report, this time the findings of Working Group III, which focused on the mitigation of climate change. It is thus timely to take a good hard look at just where we are in the battle to bring global heating under control. Some idea of how well we are doing may be gleaned from the fact that the WGIII report has, this time, a far bigger emphasis on the utilisation of technological 'solutions' designed to suck excess carbon from the air. This is nothing less than a clear admission of defeat; an acceptance of the fact that we have failed to bring global greenhouse gas emissions under control and can no longer sidestep dangerous climate breakdown through emissions reductions alone.
Don't get me wrong. Making the 45 percent cuts to global emissions needed by 2030, to have any chance of keeping this side of the 1.5C dangerous climate change guardrail, is not impossible, at least theoretically. The problem is that emissions are on track to be close to 14 percent higher by this date. Of course, we could decide, at a stroke, to transform the world's economy, so that it was entirely predicated on emissions cuts rather than the extraction of profit and the accumulation of wealth. The trouble is, unfettered, no-holds-barred, capitalism, has the global economy in a stranglehold, while world leaders are completely in thrall to GDP as a measure of success. There are no fast bucks to be made by looking out for the greater good, so this simply ain't gonna happen.
The reality is, then, that we are practically certain to face a grim future of perilous, all-pervasive, climate breakdown. It is no longer a matter of what we can do to avoid it, but of what we should expect in the decades to come, how we can adapt to a hothouse Earth blighted by extreme weather and what we can do to stop a bleak situation deteriorating even further.
You may have come across the terms ‘hothouse Earth’ or ‘greenhouse Earth’ before. They are used formally, in a definitive sense, to describe the state of our planet in the geological past when global temperatures have been so high that the poles have been ice free. A hothouse state, however, is not required for hothouse conditions, which are already becoming far more commonplace, and fast becoming the trademark of our broken climate. What I mean by hothouse Earth, then, is not an ice-free planet, but a world in which lethal heatwaves and temperatures in excess of 50°C (122ºF) in the tropics are nothing to write home about; a world where winters at temperate latitudes have dwindled to almost nothing and baking summers are the norm; a world where the oceans have heated beyond the point of no return and the mercury climbing to 30°C+ (86ºF+) within the Arctic Circle is no big deal.
To all intents and purposes, this is the hothouse planet we are committed to living on; one that would be utterly alien to our grandparents. The fact is that a temperature rise of 2°C – which is likely the minimum we are committed to – may not sound like much, but remember that this is an average temperature. In some parts of the planet, the increase will be far higher. In addition, even this small rise will drive extreme high temperature events beyond anything experienced in human history. A child born in 2020 will face a far more hostile world than its grandparents. Compared with someone lucky enough to be born in 1960, one study estimates that – on average – they will experience seven times more heatwaves, twice as many droughts and three times as many floods and harvest failures. The reality could very well be far worse, and it will be for the billions of vulnerable people living in the majority world. Looking at the broader picture, anyone younger than 40 today will suffer ever more frequent bouts of extreme weather that would be virtually impossible in the absence of global heating.
The fact that the situation is bleak, however, is no reason to give up; to surrender to inertia; to accept our lot. Far from it. If we are to have any chance of stopping a grim future on a hothouse planet, becoming a cataclysmic one, then we must act now to slash emissions. If we don't, our children and their children will never forgive us.
My new book, HOTHOUSE EARTH: AN INHABITANT'S GUIDE is published by Icon Books on 4th August.
We need to do more about climate destabilization, and do it better.... FAST.
https://countercurrents.org/2021/06/human-population-activity-the-primary-factor-that-has-precipitated-a-climate-emergency-biodiversity-loss-and-environmental-pollution-on-our-watch/
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/367821038_A_Case_for_Limiting_Total_Food_Production_for_Human_Consumption