Code red: UN report rings climate alarm
NEW DELHI: The world may have lost the opportunity to keep global warming under 1.5 degree C over pre-industrial levels, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in a new report on Monday, highlighting the climate crisis that the world faces.
One of the report’s authors, Linda Mearns said it more evocatively during the release: “I don’t see any area that’s safe... Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.”
That isn’t hyperbole. Each of the five scenarios, based on varying levels of emission cuts, will see the world exceeding the 1.5 degree C mark set in Paris in 2015. And it will do this in the decade of the 2030s. And in three, it will exceed the 2 degree C mark, with “far worse heat waves, droughts and flood-inducing downpours”.
India is no stranger to any of those.
Glacial retreat in the Hindu Kush Himalayas; compounding effects of sea-level rise and intense tropical cyclones leading to flooding; an erratic monsoon and intense heat stress are likely to impact India in the years ahead, the report warned, even as it claimed that the Indian ocean has already warmed up faster than the global average.
Most worryingly, one of the five scenarios is a best-case one: carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions declining rapidly to net zero around 2050. Even in this, the rise in global mean sea level could be 1-2 feet by 2100, and “6-12 inches” by the middle of the century, according to Bob Kopp, one of the authors.
And to round off the summary of really bad news: the Arctic, according to the report, is now melting three times faster than originally estimated.
In a stark warning to world leaders, the 42-page summary for policy makers titled: “Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis” drafted by 234 scientists from 66 countries (the report itself is an impressive 3,949 pages long, and based on an analysis of 14,000 scientific papers by experts) warned that global warming of 1.5 degree C relative to 1850-1900 levels would be definitely exceeded under intermediate, high and very high emission scenarios and will be “more likely than not to be exceeded” even when countries agree to switch to net-zero emissions by 2050.
A net zero emission target implies that all human-caused greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are balanced out by removing GHGs from the atmosphere in a process known as carbon removal.But all may not be lost if the easier of the two Paris goals is met. The IPCC report underlines that human actions still have the potential to determine the future course of climate change and can strive to keep global warming under 2 degree C.
NEW DELHI: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on Monday, which said that extreme weather events have increased due to the rise in carbon emissions and the planet will reach 1.5°C warming threshold much earlier than anticipated, may not result in higher ambition at the Glasgow climate conference in November, said experts on climate change negotiations.
IPCC’s Physical Science Basis report, the first of its three sixth assessment report, tells the world that oceans could rise by 1-2 feet even in one of the better scenarios (it considered five) by turn of this century, and heat waves occur 14 times as often if warming touches 2°C.
“The report tells us, we have a small window to act,” said Govindasamy Bala, professor at the Center for Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences in Indian Institute of Sciences, Bangalore, and one of the lead authors of the report.
The report mentioned that limiting temperature rise to 1.5°C by turn of the century is becoming beyond reach. “Earlier, we had given 20 years for 1.5°C temperature rise, now it is 10 years,” he said, adding that carbon emissions have already increased the temperature by 1.1°C in the last 100 years. So, the world has window for only 0.4°C.
To ensure that window remains open, Bala said the five scenarios presented by the report show that there is no longer an option of a peaking year (when a country’s carbon emissions would peak) available to avert dramatic danger of climate change. “We have to go for emission reduction and that is net zero,” he said.
In the net zero concept, the world, as a whole, theoretically, will stop emitting carbon dioxide by 2050. A country will be able to emit carbon equal to the carbon sinks it has and the amount of carbon credits it can buy.
Several European countries such as France, UK and Sweden have brought law to achieve net zero by 2050 and many others are on way to have similar laws.
However, India and China, the world’s two biggest emitters have opposed net zero, saying it would go against the United Nations Climate Framework that provides for differentiated responsibility among developed and developing world and equity to carbon space. Net zero, they said, would impose binding restrictions on the developing world, which is historically not responsible for the problem of climate change.
Sunita Narain, director general of Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) said net zero was zero gain for developing countries as it would benefit the rich world, which has already exhausted its carbon space, and the developing world would continue to suffer in the absence of free technology transfer. “This report from global scientists must be a wake-up call. We can no longer lose time in prevarication or in finding new excuses not to act— including empty promises of net zero by 2050,” she said.
Bala, however, said climate science supports net zero as the world cannot look at 2 or higher degree C climate scenarios anymore. “We have to aim for 1.5 degree temperature rise. Time to first allow emissions to rise and then reduce is not there.”
A senior environment ministry official, who has been part of the climate negotiating team for long, said the IPCC report will not alter India’s climate negotiating strategy. “It is clear to us and several other developing countries that the Glasgow conference is to make Paris agreement operational. That will happen,” the official said. He added that the review of the target under the Paris climate deal would happen in 2023-24 and anything before that would depend on enhanced climate finance by the developed world.
Climate talks have got more impetus in 2021 with appointment of John Kerry as US President Joe Biden’s special climate envoy. Kerry, since taking over in March, has visited several important countries for climate talks including biggest carbon emitters after United States, China and India. The US is keen to have higher ambition for Paris agreement, which becomes operational from January 2022.
Kerry was in New Delhi in April 2021 for three days, but environment ministry officials said former environment minister Prakash Javadekar was very clear that the net zero concept was alien to the Paris agreement.
Dr. Arunabha Ghosh, CEO of Council on Energy, Environment and Water, said, “Given that India is one of the most climatevulnerable countries, we must recognise that even geographically faraway climatic changes can have consequences for our monsoons and intensity of extreme events. India should nudge the international community to capitalise a Global Resilience Reserve Fund to help lower the peaks of climate risks for the most vulnerable countries and create an insurance cushion against severe climate shocks.”