“The evidence is irrefutable. Greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and deforestation are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk. Global heating is affecting every region on earth, with many of the changes becoming irreversible.”
These are the sobering opening lines of the UN Secretary General’s statement following the publication of the IPCC Climate Change 2021 report, released on Monday. He follows this grim message with: “The internationally agreed threshold of 1.5°C is perilously close. We are already at 1.2°C and rising. Warming has accelerated in recent decades. Every fraction of a degree counts.”
He goes on to say that the viability of our human societies is in the hands of leaders from governments and business. This is another way of saying that we are walking down a road that leads to the end of human civilisation in the near term, following the same people who caused the problem.
We must protect and restore what we can of ecosystems to save ourselves. Politicians have met 39 times in the past 25 years to discuss the biodiversity and climate emergencies. In every one of those years the crisis got worse, year on year.
It is now unequivocal that it is the human exploitation of nature that is warming up the atmosphere, ocean and land. If we had to cut all greenhouse gas emissions tomorrow, it would still take 20 to 30 years to see global temperatures stabilise.
The report states that without immediate action and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, it will no longer be possible to limit the global warming increase over 1850 to 1.5°C or even 2°C. The EU’s and Malta’s net-zero emissions target by 2050 is now proven to be too little too late.
The report projects that beyond 2030, at 1.5°C, ecosystems collapse will increase in all regions on earth. There will be increasing heatwaves, longer warm seasons and shorter cold seasons. At 2°C of global warming, heat extremes will have a lethal effect on people and it will be impossible to grow crops for food in some parts of the world. Urban environments will be hardest hit. Sea levels will rise and severe storms, cyclones and flooding will be commonplace.
The report produced regional predictions for the Mediterranean. At an increase of over 1.5°C and 2°C, we can expect more warming, temperature extremes, increase in droughts and desertification, rainfall decrease, increase in fire weather, sea level rises and wind decrease.
The reality on the ground this summer will surely require the report scientists to revise their conclusions. We are already experiencing debilitating heat and forests are burning all around Malta in the Mediterranean. Floods in Europe that would normally occur every 100 years are occurring now and expected annually. All this at a global temperature increase of 1.2°C.
Methane (CH4) has a global warming potential that is 86 times more powerful than carbon dioxide over a period of 20 years. The report states that strong, rapid and sustained reductions in CH4 emissions would limit warming and improve air quality.
CH4 is produced in livestock rearing and farming. The melting of the permafrost, frozen ground under ice and glaciers, would release incalculable volumes of methane in an unstoppable feedback loop. The report excludes feedback loops and includes a margin of error, which means that things could get much worse, quicker.
There is no time for delay and no room for excuses if we are to mitigate climate catastrophe. This is Code Red for Malta.