This week the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC,
released the third and final part of its sixth assessment report.
Parts one and two clearly established the links between human activity
and climate change, as well as assessed the destruction that would be
caused in different scenarios.
This third part, though, is the biggie.
It’s what we can do to fix it.
The report itself is huge, but the message is clear: fossil fuel usage must
peak before 2025, and be halved by 2030 to give us a shot at limiting
warming to 1.5 Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
That’s about thirty months to secure a stable future for the humans on this
planet.
And that sounds terrifying, I know.
But this report didn’t just give us a timer; it gave us a road map.
So let’s get into the details.
278 authors from 65 countries drafted this report on recent trends in
greenhouse gas emissions, as well as technology and government
policies worldwide, to assess whether it’s enough to meet our global goal
to limit warming to 1.5 degrees.
After analysis, the authors found that current country policies fell short of
CO2 reductions needed to limit to 1.5 degrees by 14 to 23 gigatons, which
is just under half the amount of CO2 we produced in 2019.
That gap is one of the reasons that for the first time in its 34 year
history, this IPCC report stipulated that we can’t afford to build any
new fossil fuel infrastructure.
No new gas pipelines, no new oil drilling or refineries, no new coal
mines or power plants.
In fact, the team of experts went even further, and stated that even
some existing fossil fuel infrastructure will have to be shut down to hit
the 1.5 degrees target.
And if we manage to reach net zero - where any carbon we emit is balanced with processes
absorbing it from the atmosphere, global temperature will stabilize.
But to have a shot at 1.5 degrees, that needs to be achieved by 2050.
With almost 80 percent of the world’s energy consumption still relying
on fossil fuels, making the change is going to take political pressure
and a lot of innovation and determination.
The good news is that, according to this final part of the report, we’ve
already developed nearly all of the technologies needed to move
away from fossil fuels.
That could be through using alternative fuel sources, such as green
hydrogen or renewables.
Or through less technological methods, such as redeveloping cities,
transportation, manufacturing and construction to require less energy,
and be more resilient to extreme weather.
But surprisingly, other sectors are actually ahead of where scientists
expected them to be.
The team found that drastically reducing the carbon produced by our
electricity supply is already technically feasible.
Now, there are costs associated with this.
By the 2050 deadline, the team calculates that a given country’s
economic output per person, or GDP, would be just a few percentage
points lower compared to the beginning of the transition period.
In the grand scheme of things, that's a better deal than many were
expecting.
That said, for developing countries, that's a pretty big hit, so
we need to address sharing benefits and bridging technology gaps so that
no one feels like they have to use fossil fuels to compete.
The report also highlights economic and health benefits like: Fewer
cancer-causing compounds from fossil fuel combusting transport; more
fresh air and shade from the sun with integrated urban green spaces and
sustainable cities; and the ability to cross-train workers in new,
well-paying jobs in green manufacturing; We can do this.
We can have all of it.
And the report lays out a lot of detail on how we can get there, but the
main takeaways are that we have to: ensure deep reductions in fossil fuel
usage over the next decade, electrify cars, homes, appliances and more,
improve energy efficiency, and rapidly switch to alternative fuels.
It also states that we’re also going to need to remove greenhouse
gasses from the atmosphere.
This will be in the form of planting, repairing, and protecting natural
carbon sinks, like forests, that not only suck up carbon dioxide, but can
also provide a cooling effect for areas around them.
And of course, there's mention of Carbon Capture; it works by capturing
atmospheric CO2 and storing it, and while it’s no silver bullet, it’s likely to
be an important tool if we can deploy it at scale.
The team emphasizes that having plans for carbon capture does not
mean that we can continue to use fossil fuels as we have and fix it later.
The problem is that, according to the report, certain governments and
business interests often want to do just that.
Or at least, say they’re going to do just that, and hope that it works.
Unsurprisingly, fossil fuel companies continue to lobby against these
climate policies for their own financial gain.
Such is the impact of this issue that the UN secretary general, António
Guterres, issued a statement alongside this IPCC report’s publication.
In it, he urged people to hold their leaders accountable, and to “build a
grassroots movement that cannot be ignored.”
This third report also urges adaptation.
In short, we need to adapt to changes that we’re already seeing, and make
sure that our approach is equitable.
Because climate change is happening now.
And despite extreme weather events now happening worldwide, some countries
are feeling it way more than others.
And always, the people with resources to deal with it are
going to do better than those who don’t have those resources.
We have to acknowledge that some countries have benefited from a
century or more of unsustainable land use, lifestyles, and patterns of
Consumption.
And this means that the wealthier countries must support lower- and
middle-income countries in their efforts to not only jump over the
combustion gap but in adding capacity, via education, infrastructure, and
support, for these countries to leapfrog forward into sustainable
development.
The message from this report is clear as day, we’ve got almost all of the
pieces of the puzzle ready to go, but the window to save ourselves is
rapidly closing, so we need to act fast–and act equitably.
No one action will be a silver bullet to stop climate change dead in its
tracks.
We need everything we have in our arsenal deployed together to
fix this.
Where we go from here depends largely on what we are willing to fight
for.
With this report, the road onwards is mapped in full: We have the tech, we
can do it, we just need to force our governments and companies into
action.
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