UN report offers options to end climate crisis

Nearly 200 countries gathered Monday to face a question that will outlive Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: How can we stop carbon pollution from overheating the planet, threatening life as it knows it, and how can we do this?

After closed-door, virtual negotiations approve a summary of a phonebook-sized document detailing options for drawing down, the answer will be available on April 4. TreibhausgasesExtracting them from thin air.

Alden Meyer is a senior analyst at E3G’s climate and energy think tank. “The science has been crystal clear, the effects are costly and mounting but we still have time to close that window and get ahead the worst of them,” he said.

“This report will give us the answers we need to get there if we’re serious.”

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), laid out the physical science in August 2021: Changes in Global warmingsea level rise, as well as shifts in frequency, duration, intensity, and severity of cyclones.

That was the first part of a three-part assessment and the sixth since 1990. It predicted that Earth’s surface temperature would rise 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels within the next decade.

A 1.5C cap on global warming—the aspirational goal of the 2015 Paris climate accord—has been embraced as a target by most of the world’s nations.

However, the current carbon-cutting obligations under the treaty still place us on a dangerous path to 2.7C of warming in 2100.

A liveable future

Part two of the more than 10,000-page report—described by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres as an “atlas of human suffering”—catalogued past and future climate impacts on human society and the natural world.

Do not delay Climate actionIt concluded that this would significantly reduce the chances of a “livable” future.

Part three—spread across thousands of pages—is about how to slow and stop warming, with separate chapters on the key sectors where rapid and deep change is critical: energy, transport, industry, agriculture, among others.

“We are referring to the large-scale transformations of all the major system,” Celine Guivarch (climate economist and co-author) told AFP.

It also addresses ways to curb Carbon emissionsReduce demand by making buildings more efficient or encouraging lifestyle shifts such as eating less beef or not flying half way around the globe for a week.

The report details more than a dozen techniques for pulling CO2 out of the air, which will be needed to compensate for sectors—such as aviation and shipping—that are likely still carbon polluters by mid-century.

Taryn Frasen, an analyst at World Resources Institute, stated that “many factors have changed” since the last three-part report, which was published eight years ago.

The Paris Agreement—the first climate deal in which all countries pledged action—was signed.

The world has witnessed an inexorable crescendo of devastating climate impacts, including fires and floods.

The price for renewable energy, which is key to reducing carbon emissions, has fallen below the price of fossil fuels in most markets.

‘Inflamed situation’

The IPCC “solutions report” draws on hundreds of models that project development pathways that keep Earth within Paris’s temperature goals.

Fransen said, “There are scenarios where high renewables and little nuclear”

“This report lays out these pathways. It’s now up to our leaders to take this to heart.

Meyer said that the IPCC findings will be useful for UN political negotiations, which resume November 27th in Egypt at COP 27.

This statement was made by the head from Ukraine of the IPCC delegation at a closed plenary in February. It came just days after Russian troops invaded Ukraine.

“Human-induced Climate change and the war on Ukraine have the same roots—fossil fuels—and our dependence on them,” said Svitlana Krakovska, according to multiple sources.

During the two week IPCC negotiations, starting Monday, the possibility of war in Ukraine will be discussed.

Meyer said, “It’s an even more enflamed environment.” “I don’t know how it will turn out, but it’s something I’ll be watching.”

© 2022 AFP