This month marks the fifth year that I’ve been writing this climate change column. It was originally published in the Albuquerque Journal North in November of 2019. In the last five years there has been progress on climate change, but as most of us know, we are not moving fast enough.
Currently the Cop 29 Climate Conference is being held in Azerbaijan. According to Inside Climate News reports that will be released at this conference, it will show that warming is not just accelerating but that based on existing policies, we are likely going to hit 3 degrees Celsius of warming by 2100.
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change executive secretary Simon Stiell said recently that current national plans “fall miles short of what’s needed to stop global heating from crippling every economy, and wrecking billions of lives and livelihoods across every country.”
With updates due in early 2025, the plans that will be part of the COP 29 agenda are “among the most important policy documents so far this century,” Stiell said, urging COP 29 to pull the emergency brake on emissions by the end of the decade.
As Inside Climate Change announced, all the submitted national plans add up to about 51.5 gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions in 2030, which is just 2.6% less than in 2019, instead of the necessary 40% reduction we would need to keep global warming at a manageable level.
This was all seconded by the World Meteorological Organization report on greenhouse gas emissions, which detailed another year of increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide.
Deputy Secretary-General Ko Barrett of the WMO and a senior climate advisor with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration stated that “carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere faster than any time experienced during human existence.”
Their report tells us that the world is headed for a temperature increase of 2.6 to 3.1 degrees Celsius.
“This is, frankly, too hot to handle,” Barrett said.
That is not hyperbole. The last 15 months we have breached 1.5 degrees warming. We know what that is like. It is unbearably hot. There are more forest fires, record-breaking storms and flooding. It is costing trillions. People are dying and species are vanishing.
What is really tragic is that we have the solutions. Rebecca Solnit writing for the Guardian recently asked, “Is it worse to have no climate solutions — or to have them but refuse to use them?”
Solnit states that scientists and engineers have been telling us for a very long time what we need to do and how to do it.
“Most of us already know what we need to make a swift transition away from burning fossil fuels. Protecting forests and other natural systems and redesigning how we live, travel, and produce and consume also matter, but phasing out the extraction and burning of fossil fuels is the big one,” Solnit said.
These actions, she stresses, are our lifeboats, lifeboats that are well-designed, efficient, affordable and adaptable. Unfortunately, these lifeboats do not have the support of many of the corporate bosses and tech oligarchs who drive global policy. And, of course, these actions may reduce their short-term profits. But do they really think we’re going to get there with AI solutions and geo-engineering? They better head to their fancy bunkers.
A recent United Nations report states that nothing short of a “quantum leap in ambition will suffice.” The report said that if countries adhere to all long-term net-zero pledges in addition to their national targets, warming could be limited to 1.9 degrees Celsius, but they are not thus far taking the steps to put those goals within reach.
“We’re playing with fire; but there can be no more playing for time,” U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said regarding the report.
No one knows why the Neanderthals vanished. It is likely that they failed to adapt to changing conditions. They did not cause those changing conditions and were not capable of reversing them.
We know they were intelligent, but apparently they lacked the ability to plan far ahead and adapt to rapid change. They could not forecast the future. We can. They couldn’t change their future. We can. They didn’t have lifeboats. We do.
The question is: As the climate crisis gets worse and worse, will we act, will we go down with the ship, or will we use the lifeboats?
Published on November 17, 2024, in the Albuquerque Journal.
© Judith Polich. All Rights Reserved. May be republished with author’s written consent and proper attribution.