IPCC climate report reveals dire straits ahead

By CHRISTINE LAI

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has released a new report with warnings of the irreversible effects of climate change that must be addressed before global warming exceeds 1.5 °C.

The world’s leading climate scientists released their latest Synthesis Report, following an eight-year-long study on greenhouse gas emissions, impacts and future risks of climate change, and options for reducing the rate that climate change is expected to take.

The IPCC reported devastating consequences of greenhouse gas emissions for the long term, looking to over a century of “burning fossil fuels as well as unequal and unsustainable energy and land use” as the causes for leading to “global warming of 1.1 °C above pre-industrial levels”.

According to the report, the estimated level of global warming as increasing by 1.5 °C carries serious threats to living conditions across the world.

It’s projected that 950 million people across the world’s drylands will experience water stress, heat stress, and desertification. There will also be an increase of 24% of the world’s population that will be subject to flooding, with the cost for adaptation and residual damage  to major crops coming to $94 billion AUD ($63 billion US)

UN secretary-general António Guterre declared that “the climate time-bomb is ticking”, at a meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), describing the latest report as a ” how-to guide to defuse the climate time-bomb”.

 ”It is a survival guide for humanity”, he said.

Impacts of climate change for NSW 

Since the 1960s, average temperatures have been rising steadily as a result of global warming and climate change. In NSW, the hottest decade on record was the period between 2011-2020.

Head of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Simon Stiell spoke to AFP (in Copenhagen) about the emissions released internationally.

“To be more specific, we know that 80 per cent of emissions are generated within the G20 [which includes Australia]. That is the very, very clear starting point. They have 85 per cent of global GDP. So the technology, the financial capacity to address the crisis resides there”, he said.

Australia’s overall contribution to world emissions is around 1.5 per cent. When  adjusted for population size, the emissions per capita of Australia is just off the top 10 world’s worst polluters.

AMCS Senior Great Barrier Reef Campaigner Cherry Muddle responded to the IPCC report, speaking about how climate inaction had come at the cost of protecting the future of Australia’s reef systems.

“The Great Barrier Reef has experienced four mass bleaching events since 2016, driven by marine heat waves caused by climate change. The waters off south-eastern Australia are warming 3-4 times the global average and changing ecosystems faster than science can keep up with, while our Great Southern Reef’s kelp forests are struggling,” Muddle said.

Scientists from the IPCC panel recommended a unanimous move for governments and nation states to take on urgent action to respond to climate change for the preservation of the future and to minimise damages to the Earth.

There is a more than 50% chance that global temperatures will reach or surpass 1.5 degrees Celsius between 2021-2040, and this threshold may be hit earlier at the current rate of greenhouse gas emissions.

The next IPCC report is estimated to be published by 2030.