Time to summarize the summary of the summary of the summary
of everything we know
about climate change and its impacts on everything we know and care about.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
just released the final piece of the Sixth Assessment Report.
They've had the daunting task of summarizing
everything that has been published
in the three working group reports – video here – and three special reports.
For those keeping track at home, that's over 8500 pages of content.
The IPCC sent two important documents out into the world today.
One: the Synthesis Report, which is a long, heavily cited document
written by scientists summarizing the sixth assessment cycle.
And two: the summary for policymakers, a much shorter document because perhaps not
everyone can be expected to read a thousand plus page book
when they want to know what's going on.
The SPM, as it's often called,
is agreed on line by line by governments party to the IPCC,
which is an annoyingly long process of arguing over phrasing and wording.
But in the end you have a document that 195 countries signed off on and endorse.
And it says – stop me if you've heard this before – human activity, predominantly
from burning fossil fuels, has warmed the planet by 1.1 degrees Celsius,
and this warming has and will continue harming people and places,
where those who have contributed
the least experiencing the greatest negative impacts.
In a few places we've been responding to the increasing risks effectively.
But most everywhere else our adaptation strategies are a mess.
They're unequally distributed,
too incremental and often maladaptive, meaning they're doing more harm than good.
And on the mitigation side, it's a mixed bag.
Some things are working and renewables are cheaper than they've ever been.
But even though the public is demanding action
more and more, we're still putting more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere
and not even meeting the emissions reductions
targets set out under the Paris Agreement.
And with those temperature
increases, it increases the likelihood of warming-charged disasters
and compounding and cascading extreme events.
Which is pretty bad news,
considering most of the world is already
at its limits contending with disasters today.
Everything becomes worse and harder, the warmer it gets.
Okay, so that's where we're at.
But the report also has a lot to say about where we could go.
For starters, it's got this table
that plainly lays out what we need to do to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Global greenhouse gas emissions must be cut by around 42% by 2030,
60% by 2035, and knock on the door of elimination by 2050.
The IPCC’s favorite phrase “rapidly narrowing
or closing window of opportunity” has never been more true.
When scientists modeled what the future climate could look like, all the scenarios
that keep us below 1.5 have global emissions peaking before 2025, which is...
only 21 months away.
But the report also makes it clear that this is doable.
And because they are much better at optimism,
I'm going to let ClimateAdam explain.
Firstly and foremostly, climate policy is already working.
It can be easy to get the idea that all these years
of negotiations and deals have achieved nothing, because...
well, I mean, because look at everything that's happening.
But the report spells out that policies have led to several billion tonnes
of avoided emissions per year, indicating that we are starting
to turn the tide and shift towards decarbonization.
This isn't enough progress, but it's not nothing.
We now have a host
of climate change solutions which are available, cheap and popular.
The report mentions everything from solar panels to avoiding food
waste in a single sentence here.
And the tech is getting cheap.
The costs of solar, wind and batteries are all plummeting.
Now I get that these bits of good news might seem irrelevant
given that we're risking overshooting 1.5 or two degrees.
But the report makes clear that there's no point at which we get to give up.
Take extreme weather.
With every additional increment of global warming, extreme weather gets worse.
Or the flipside of that: every increment of global warming
that we can avoid means avoiding people dying of these disasters.
In fact, this idea that climate change is mostly incremental is so important
that the report uses the phrase “increment of global
warming” half a dozen times.
So yeah, even if we do overshoot our limits,
there's still the world to fight for.
And avoiding as many increments of global warming as possible is a thing
we could just do.
We're at the point where we've got all the tools we need,
and if for some reason, all the projected risks of increasing global temperatures
aren't enough for you,
there are tons of non climate benefits of accelerated
climate action – like reduced air pollution, walkable cities, better
and tastier produce and increased food security.
Plus, the economics are on the side of action too.
Just consider air pollution alone – the cost of reducing emissions
is less than the economic benefits of the improved health
and well-being of people living with clean air.
TL;DR: Anything but reducing emissions and building risk resilience as fast
and as equitably as we can,
is going to harm more people and places and cost us literal billions of dollars.
This synthesis is the last major report the IPCC is scheduled to release
for at least the next five years.
When the seventh assessment report starts coming out at the end of the decade.
I hope we're still not having the same conversations.
So let's let the end of this assessment cycle be the start,
or really the continuation of imagining better futures and demanding
from our governments and the people in power the future we all deserve.
And because this is the summary of the summary of the summary.
You might be wanting to learn more about the previous reports.
Or even: what is the IPCC and why does it matter?
Well, don't you worry, because Adam and I have made a bunch of videos
on those very topics and the links will be in all the normal link places.
Thanks so much for watching. Bye.