Express View: Latest climate report highlights challenges of attaining Paris Pact’s target
IPCC modeling shows that the threshold at which the climate crisis becomes irreversible could be exceeded by the first half of the 2030s
Between August 2021 and April 2022, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released three reports outlining the science behind the climate catastrophe and proposing ways to mitigate it. The fourth report in the series was released on Tuesday. As a synthesis of the earlier studies, it gives the world a chance to contain the crisis. The pace of growth in greenhouse gas emissions has slowed over the past five years, says the panel, which includes some of the world’s leading climate scientists. However, the world is dangerously close to exhausting its carbon budget. “The threshold at which the climate crisis becomes irreversible” could be exceeded in the first half of the 2030s, IPCC modeling shows.
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The Paris Climate Pact had agreed to limit global temperature rise to 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to “continue efforts to limit warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels”. The IPCC studies have consistently confirmed the Pact’s emphasis on the “more desirable target” and most countries are now on the same page on the 1.5°C limit. To limit temperature rise below breakthrough levels, temperatures must peak by 2025 and fall by 43 percent over the next five years, the panel’s scientists have stressed. In a business-as-usual scenario, temperatures could rise well above 2°C by the end of this century. The mitigation efforts currently underway must be pursued quickly to avert catastrophic climate impacts. The good news is that the world has the toolkit for this purpose. There is also near agreement on the links between recent extreme weather events – floods in Pakistan, Hurricane Ian in the US, heatwaves and wildfires in North America, Australia and parts of Europe, the unpredictability of the monsoons in India, challenges for small island nations. But unity almost always seems to fall apart when it comes to assuming responsibility. The reported disagreement over the fine print on fossil fuels in earlier drafts of the latest IPCC report shows why “collective action” remains a strained concept in climate negotiations.
In about eight months, climate delegates will gather in Dubai for the 28th UNFCCC Conference of Parties (CoP). The summit is designed to assess progress towards achieving the Paris Pact goals. The latest IPCC report calls for more initiative from them, particularly on issues of money and technology transfers to the Global South.
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