Climate action ever more urgent

The last instalment of the sixth assessment cycle of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), released last week, has reiterated its reminders and issued fresh warnings about the climate catastrophe that is closing in on the planet. The earlier instalments had made it clear that the present pace of climate action is not enough to slow down the impending catastrophe which will make the world unliveable or extremely difficult to live in.

In 2018, the IPCC said that there was little chance of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels by the end of the century if, by 2030, the world failed to cut emissions by half of the levels in 2010. But emissions continue to rise, though there are many climate-action commitments, including net-zero announcements, from all countries. Though the rise in global energy-related carbon emissions was less last year than in 2021, they still remain dangerously high.

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The report says that “the threshold beyond which the climate crisis becomes irreversible” could be crossed by the first half of the 2030s. To keep the temperature rise below the 1.5 degrees Celsius level, it should peak by 2025 and decline by 43 per cent in the next five years. This looks almost impossible and that is why the efforts to reduce emission should be speeded up.

Everyone is in agreement about this but nobody is ready to work for it because it involves some pain. The wisdom which should dictate that this pain has to be endured to avert the bigger pain in future is missing. There is a reminder every day of the bigger disasters waiting to happen. Errant monsoons, hotter summers, cyclones, forest fires, droughts, floods, rising sea levels and many other deviant natural phenomena tell that the planet is becoming more and more inhospitable. The consequences for society, politics, economies and all areas of life are immense and they are all bad.

Without a scaling up of NDC (Nationally Determined Contributions) targets after 2030, median warming could touch 2.8 degrees by 2100. Even a 3.2 degrees warming is not ruled out. Financing, for both adaptation and mitigation, and technological initiatives are crucial, and developed countries have the biggest responsibilities in this regard. The report calls for “accelerated financial support for developing countries from developed countries and other sources”, in the form of “scaled-up public grants for vulnerable regions”. Climate change is the most serious threat to humanity, and unfortunately there is not effective and adequate action to counter it.

The next evaluation is to be done at the UNFCCC’s 28th Conference of Parties (CoP) in Dubai later this year, and hopefully there will be more fruitful action.