Well! This is a turn up isn't? No-one saw this coming did they? The United Nations says the
world will definitely now pass the 1.5 degrees Celsius warming limit that our global leaders set
out in the Paris Accord in 2015. I mean imagine my surprise as I leafed through the pages of the...
what are you doing? I'm giving the ladies and gentlemen a review of the latest IPCC climate
report. Well I think I can take it from here thanks. But I've only just got to star... OUT!
Fascist oppressor! Oh shut up! And close the door. Oh yeah,
close the door after the horse is bolted. Very appropriate!
IPCC 6th Assessment Report. Just came out this week. Everything's terrible,
apart from the bits that aren't terrible. There's nothing we can do, apart from all the things we
can do. And we're all screwed unless we do all the things that make sure we're not screwed. And at
the risk of being sued by Seth Meyers, for more on this it's time for a closer look [Applause]
Hello and welcome to Just Have a Think. If you've been a viewer of this channel since it
first started you'll know that I've produced explainer videos for every Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC publication, ever since the slightly earth-shattering SR15
Special Report came out back in 2018. This latest offering is the last chapter of what the IPCC call
their Sixth Assessment Cycle, and it represents the culmination of eight years of work. We're
not due to hear from them again until the Seventh Assessment Cycle starts taking shape towards the
end of this decade. So this is it. The official Line in the Sand if you like. And, by the way,
everything that goes into these reports is scrutinized, debated and sanitized ad nauseum
by scientific, political and legal representatives from each one of the 195 countries that signed
up to the Paris Agreement, until a sort of lowest common denominator consensus version is eventually
agreed upon. So the stuff in here is, shall we say, slightly more diplomatically phrased than
some climate scientists would have preferred. So what startling revelations does it have for us
then? Well, as Che Guevara's poor relation there eloquently pointed out a moment ago,
in this report the IPCC gets as close as it ever has done to conceding that the world will almost
certainly now sail past the crucial 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature increase limit set out in
Paris in 2015. If you'll allow me to use the now appallingly hackneyed and overused cliché
of comparing our global civilization to one of those massive container ships that take about
three miles to change direction, and if we place a little paper cut out of one of those container
ships onto the emissions projection chart from this report, in that slightly patronizing way
that we YouTubers like to do, then we can start to visualize how things are likely to pan out in the
coming decades. This is the route the container ship has been following since the year 2000.
There was a bit of a diversion around 2015 when the Paris Agreement was being put together and
all our global leaders were trying very hard to look like they could actually be bothered,
but we got over that aberration and quite quickly got back on track towards our final destination
of full-on climate catastrophe. We actually took an even bigger detour during COVID that the IPCC
doesn't show on their chart, but it looked a bit like this. And for a while there it threatened to
stall The Good Ship Humanity completely. But once the lockdowns were lifted the insatiable human
appetite for fossil fuels got us back on track for a second time. Now, here is where we arrive at a
bit of a divergence. You see our wise and noble global leaders have already enshrined in law what
are known as Implemented Policies, designed to gently steer the ship away from its current course
towards this slightly gentler direction. The even better news is that each country that's signed up
to the Paris Agreement has also committed to what are known as Nationally Determined Contributions
or NDCs that could potentially - I mean if every single one was implemented to the letter - could
potentially really steer the ship away from danger in the coming decades. The trouble is,
according to World Data Lab and the Brookings Institution, not many countries are really taking
any notice of their own current legislation at all, and the trajectory of the ship, by which I
mean the path we're currently on in the real world right now, looks like this, taking us up to about
70 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions a year by 2050, which equates to the higher end of the
IPCC wiggle room shading, and an average global temperature increase of almost 3.5 degrees Celsius
by the end of this century. But we're shooting for a maximum of only 1.5 degrees Celsius, right?
Of course we are! And to achieve that, say the IPCC, we would need to immediately turn
our freight ship on a sixpence, and set it in this direction. Given where we're at now and what we've
already caused, that sort of major direction change seems pretty unlikely to say the least.
As the IPCC puts it... "It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere,
ocean and land. Approximately 3.3 to 3.6 billion people live in contexts that are highly vulnerable
to climate change. Increasing weather and climate extreme events have exposed millions of people
to acute food insecurity and reduced water security, with the largest adverse impacts
observed in many locations and/or communities in Africa, Asia, Central and South America,
least developed countries, small islands and the Arctic. And globally for indigenous peoples,
small-scale food producers and low-income households. In all regions increases in
extreme heat events have resulted in human mortality and morbidity. The occurrence of
climate-related food-borne and waterborne diseases and the incidence of vector-borne diseases have
increased. Every increment of global warming will intensify multiple and concurrent hazards."
In 2060, assuming I survive that long, I will be 91 years old. According to this chart from
the report, even in the best case, so-called 'very low future emissions scenario' it's probably going
to be extremely difficult for me, even here in the UK, to get through the summer months
without air conditioning. But if we stay on our current trajectory then, within my lifetime,
I will witness a world that could be pushing towards three degrees Celsius warmer than the
one I was born into. And frankly if that happens then old buggers like me, and billions of other
people around the world who are vulnerable for one reason or another, will probably have no
chance by then.. what, what the hell? See! We're doomed! Read the t-shirt! Doomed! NO! GETOUT!
There are some positives in the IPCC findings. They make the perfectly valid point that, in
their words, "policies have enhanced efficiency, reduced rates of deforestation, and accelerated
technology deployment, leading to avoided and in some cases reduced or removed emissions. Multiple
lines of evidence suggest that mitigation policies have led to several billion tons of avoided global
emissions each year." So, you know, apparently it could be worse! We are turning a corner, say the
IPCC. There's a very definite shift towards public acceptance of the need for rapid decarbonization,
and actually the document chimes with much of the content on sustainable technology that we often
look at on this channel. The report highlights the fact that between 2010 and 2019 the cost of wind
energy dropped by 55 percent and the cost of both solar power and battery energy storage dropped by
85 percent. The adoption of electric vehicles continues to accelerate at pace, with purchase
costs rapidly approaching parity with internal combustion engine vehicles, and in the words of
the IPCC... "this has a large potential to reduce land-based transport greenhouse gas emissions on a
life cycle basis." The future is very definitely electric, despite what our friends in the fossil
fuel industry would have us believe. And the IPCC makes it absolutely clear that, even if we have
been screwing things up for the last four decades, since experts like James Hansen were literally
spelling out the dangers we faced, almost in words of one syllable, to glassy-eyed representatives in
the U.S Congress... "the evidence that the Earth is warming by an amount which is too large to be a
chance fluctuation represents a very strong case, in my opinion, that the greenhouse effect has been
detected and it is changing our climate now." And even if, as a result, we are now careering
headlong past 1.5 degrees of warming, that's very definitely not a reason to give up and stick our
heads in the sand. In fact, it's precisely the reason why every single thing that every
single human being can do now, however large or small, either as individuals or as communities,
or as Business Leaders or local councillors, or as global political leaders, can and must be done.
The report says this... "Deep, rapid and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas
emissions would lead to a discernible slowdown in global warming within around two decades, and also
to discernible changes in atmospheric composition within a few years." So, if I can be presumptuous
enough to paraphrase the great and the good of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
it's time to get off the pot and start doing some useful stuff. Or perhaps I should leave you with
the undeniable wisdom of H Brian Griffin... "well Peter, you've only got a couple of hours left. If
you're going to pull a party out of your ass you may want to stand up!" If you live in the UK and
you're watching this video prior to April the 21st 2023 then one way you can stand up is to go along
to an event called the Big One, being organized by Extinction Rebellion and supported by Greenpeace,
Friends of the Earth, and several UK unions. And don't panic! It's not another 'Occupy
London' stunt or 'let's all glue ourselves to roads and buildings' exercise. It's simply a
mass demonstration of hopefully well over a hundred thousand citizens outside Parliament,
to show the strength of opinion on the urgency of climate action. Now I'm not a member of XR and
I've never been engaged as any kind of advocate for their organization, but I just think this
event is one that every concerned citizen in Britain should attend if they possibly can.
Anyway, that's it for this very brief summary of what the IPCC says our future holds. But if
you're a real masochist and you want to delve even further into this report, then you can do
just that over at my Patreon page, where I'll be posting a series of deeper dive videos focused
on the detail of each section of the document over the course of the next two or three weeks.
I've also left a link to the IPCC Summary for Policymakers document in the description section
of this video. So if you don't want to indulge in my interpretations then you can simply read
the full report for yourself. And if you want to ensure you don't miss the next video here on
YouTube and you're on a PC tablet or smartphone then the best way to do that is by subscribing to
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I know this one's been a very difficult subject to listen to,
so as always thanks very much for watching. Stay positive. Start stalking your elected
representatives! Have a great week if you can, and remember to just have a think. See you next week.