The time for talking is over... we must act now on climate change
Countries must do more to address global warming – or pay a price, warns Howard Anthony Beck
THE climate and environmental predicament facing humankind is deeply worrying, but the limited response to it is truly scary.
We know that discussions, research and analysis must all be undertaken but we cannot afford for that to slow things up. Climate mitigation steps must proceed apace, starting now.
All governments must act, our government must act, all local authorities must act, all businesses must act, all communities must act and we individually must act.
In 2015, 196 countries committed to carbon emission reduction in the Paris Agreement as a first step towards keeping global warming to “well below 2C above pre-industrial levels”. From that point in 2015 it was hoped climate change would be systematically addressed by all countries in a collaborative manner, but nothing concrete has been done.
Research has shown the previously accepted 2C target is much more dangerous than had been thought.
Last year’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report has provided evidence that 1.5C is an appropriate target.
The commitments of the Paris Agreement parties, if achieved, will not achieve anything close to the 1.5C target. The aggregate commitments will result in a 3.2 rise in global temperature.
Countries are not acting to achieve even these targets. In the UK, since
June 2018, Government has delivered only one of 25 critical policies needed to get emissions reductions back on track to what was committed to.
The equity principle agreed to in the Paris Agreement is not being followed. National targets set by developed countries have not given due consideration to the poverty and lack of resources in less developed and fast developing countries. The commitments made to transfer resources to poorer countries to support climate mitigation actions and adapt to the negative impacts are being resisted.
To date there is no sign the required culture of commitment and collaboration is in place. If the 2020s is another decade in which carbon emissions are not reduced, the world will be in a danger zone, and at that point the required system transition will be truly daunting.
Despite the science warnings and the increasing public concern over the impacts of climate change carbon emissions are at record levels and still rising. What is going on?
The climate records and the science could not be clearer. The planet has already warmed approximately
1.1C degree as a result of the human-induced carbon emissions, something that will persist over many centuries and, with continuing carbon emissions, will continue to cause further long-term damaging climate changes. The direction of travel is as predicted by climate science and is unambiguous. Global temperatures keep increasing. The last five years, 2014-18, are the hottest in human recorded history, and 2019 looks set to be the second hottest ever.
A recent poll of people in the UK and Europe found that three-quarters of the public agree the world is in a “climate emergency”.
Furthermore, there is an understanding that historic trends will continue, with climate breakdown at risk of becoming “extremely dangerous”.
Concerns are exacerbated by what is perceived to be an insufficient response by government. With each year the additional fraction of a degree of global warming is understood to have ever-greater negative impacts, and those trends will persist for many decades.
Public awareness is raised by the climate-related events that are now happening. In 2019 people throughout the world were directly impacted by extreme events such as hurricanes and fires encroaching on human habitation.
There are increasingly frequent and intense heatwaves throughout
Europe, fires in Australia, Brazil and Siberia, and record ice melt in Greenland and the Arctic. In the UK, awareness of the climate change issue was raised in 2019 by the July heat wave and the November flooding.
Despite this, at every level there is resistance to tackling the climate problem. At a global level, at the national level and at the personal level the problem is being downplayed and avoided. The environment is left in a precarious state with ever more expensive recovery to be dealt with in the future.
At a personal level, despite the shift in climate change understandings, environment-impacting behaviours and aspirations remain a private affair with no acknowledgement of the impact on the health and wellbeing of others.
We cannot continue to avoid the challenge of the looming future dangers. We have run out of excuses. We’re all implicated and know it. We must find the courage to face the issue head on.
COP 26 in November brings the problem home to Glasgow in the full spotlight of the world’s media. It provides the opportunity over the coming year to shift decisively from collective inaction to collective action. The time to act is now.
We’re all implicated and know it. We must find the courage to face the issue head on