The scientists of the IPCC (the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) have just published their latest report, on the damage that climate breakdown is causing to humans and ecosystems. They warn that the time left to act is running out.
There could hardly be a worse time for the messages in this report to catch public attention while all eys are on bombed Ukrainian cities and fleeing refugees.
Even for those of us who think we have a good understanding of the dangers of climate change, this report is important, setting out starkly the peril we are in.
Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary General, spoke out at the report's launch:
"I have seen many scientific reports in my time, but nothing like this. Today's IPCC report is an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed leadership."
"The facts are undeniable. This abdication of leadership is criminal. The world's biggest polluters are guilty of arson of our only home.
But according to current commitments, global emissions are set to increase almost 14 per cent over the current decade. That spells catastrophe. It will destroy any chance of keeping 1.5 alive."
The world's most eminent scientists and academics in these fields - cautious, fact-checking, balancing evidence - are backing up what climate justice advocates have known and have been saying for years.
We're running out of time
There is more than a 50% chance that even in the most optimistic scenarios for cutting emissions, global average temperatures will soon rise by 1.5Ā°C or more (compared to temperatures before humans started burning fossil fuels for energy).
If the planet heats up by more than 1.5C, impacts such as wildfires, mass mortality of trees, drying of peatlands, and thawing of permafrost are likely to release additional greenhouse gases, making it even more difficult to lower global temperatures again. Some impacts will be irreversible.
How bad things get depends on what we do now and in the immediate future to cut emissions. It also depends on adaptation - taking action to protect people and ecosystems from risks which are now unavoidable (such as higher sea levels). With every fraction of a degree of global warming the risks and related losses and damages escalate.
Climate change impacts are more severe than estimated in previous IPCC assessments. The last time the IPCC reported on impacts and adaptation was back in 2014, and since then there is more evidence on the harms that climate change is already causing.
Climate change is hurting people now - especially in the Global South
Approximately 3.3 to 3.6 billion people live in contexts that are highly vulnerable to climate change
Climate change is contributing to humanitarian crises. Climate and weather extremes are increasingly driving people to leave their homes, with small island states disproportionately affected.
The scientists of the IPCC (the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) have just published their latest report, on the damage that climate breakdown is causing to humans and ecosystems. They warn that the time left to act is running out.
There could hardly be a worse time for the messages in this report to catch public attention while all eys are on bombed Ukrainian cities and fleeing refugees.
Even for those of us who think we have a good understanding of the dangers of climate change, this report is important, setting out starkly the peril we are in.
Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary General, spoke out at the report's launch:
"I have seen many scientific reports in my time, but nothing like this. Today's IPCC report is an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed leadership."
"The facts are undeniable. This abdication of leadership is criminal. The world's biggest polluters are guilty of arson of our only home.
But according to current commitments, global emissions are set to increase almost 14 per cent over the current decade. That spells catastrophe. It will destroy any chance of keeping 1.5 alive."
The world's most eminent scientists and academics in these fields - cautious, fact-checking, balancing evidence - are backing up what climate justice advocates have known and have been saying for years.
We're running out of time
There is more than a 50% chance that even in the most optimistic scenarios for cutting emissions, global average temperatures will soon rise by 1.5Ā°C or more (compared to temperatures before humans started burning fossil fuels for energy).
If the planet heats up by more than 1.5C, impacts such as wildfires, mass mortality of trees, drying of peatlands, and thawing of permafrost are likely to release additional greenhouse gases, making it even more difficult to lower global temperatures again. Some impacts will be irreversible.
How bad things get depends on what we do now and in the immediate future to cut emissions. It also depends on adaptation - taking action to protect people and ecosystems from risks which are now unavoidable (such as higher sea levels). With every fraction of a degree of global warming the risks and related losses and damages escalate.
Climate change impacts are more severe than estimated in previous IPCC assessments. The last time the IPCC reported on impacts and adaptation was back in 2014, and since then there is more evidence on the harms that climate change is already causing.
Climate change is hurting people now - especially in the Global South
Approximately 3.3 to 3.6 billion people live in contexts that are highly vulnerable to climate change
Climate change is contributing to humanitarian crises. Climate and weather extremes are increasingly driving people to leave their homes, with small island states disproportionately affected.
In a rich country like the UK, people should not have to choose between warm homes and decent food. But with a combination of rising gas prices, a failure to insulate homes or build enough renewable energy, and a deeply unequal society after a decade of austerity and benefit cuts... this is the reality for many.
In a rich country like the UK, people should not have to choose between warm homes and decent food. But with a combination of rising gas prices, a failure to insulate homes or build enough renewable energy, and a deeply unequal society after a decade of austerity and benefit cuts... this is the reality for many.
On 12 February there were protests around the country about the cost of living crisis. Further days of action have been called for 5 March and 2 April.
The crisis is being used by some in the rightwing media and Conservative party to argue that we 'can't afford' climate action, or that pumping more fossil fuels from the North Sea could solve the problem - despite the obvious fact that in a global market, oil companies will export their product to wherever they get the best price.
As families struggle, oil companies' profits have shot up with rising gas prices.
Shell recorded $19.3 billion profits in 2021, while BP raked in $12.8 billion
A windfall tax on energy giants' profits would help ensure that no one has to choose between eating and heating their homes - sign the petition here
More fundamentally, the UK's heavy dependence on gas and failure to insulate our leaky, energy inefficient housing that have left us so exposed.
In the past decade this government has failed twice over on warm homes: rates of home insulation plummeted because of a lack of support, and new houses are still being built which are not energy efficient.
The short answers to these questions are simple: in the face of escalating climate breakdown, COP26 did little to shift our trajectory away from catastrophe, away from business-as-usual and towards curbing fossil fuel use. Rich countries have refused to step up and meet their obligations to those who have least to cause the climate crisis.
In the words of Greta Thunberg, more āblah, blah, blahā.
And as for what comes next, of course we go on fighting to keep the chance of staying beneath 1.5C alive.
The long version? After two weeks with a flurry of announcements, greenwash, struggles over seemingly minor details of text, and anger from civl society massed on the streets of Glasgow, itās worth unpacking some of the details of what was really agreed, or not. How does the jargon translate into real world outcomes, literally of life and death? In these details we can see beneath the media spin and glossy announcements the brutal realities of power, money, and neocolonialism.
1.5C āon life supportā
As the window of opportunity is closing to stay within 1.5C heating and avoid the worst climate catastrophe, where are we left as COP26 ends?
Under the Paris climate deal, nations had to submit updated voluntary commitments to climate action (known as nationally determined contributions or NDCs) before the talks. Unsurprisingly, these are generally lacking in substance or urgency. Many lack clear deliver plans and delay meaningful change until after 2030. Climate Action Trackerās useful analysis finds that even with all new pledges for 2030, we will still emit roughly twice as much in 2030 as required for 1.5C.
They estimate if all current pledges for emissions cuts by 2030 are met, this gives only a 50% chance of staying below 2.4C.
Of course 1.5C itself is no āsafe levelā. Many areas have already experienced devastating wildfires, floods, hurricanes and heatwaves at 1.1C. These, in combination with longer-term impacts such as drought, disproportionately affect countries who have done least to cause the problem and have fewest resources to deal with them.
The short answers to these questions are simple: in the face of escalating climate breakdown, COP26 did little to shift our trajectory away from catastrophe, away from business-as-usual and towards curbing fossil fuel use. Rich countries have refused to step up and meet their obligations to those who have least to cause the climate crisis.
In the words of Greta Thunberg, more āblah, blah, blahā.
And as for what comes next, of course we go on fighting to keep the chance of staying beneath 1.5C alive.
The long version? After two weeks with a flurry of announcements, greenwash, struggles over seemingly minor details of text, and anger from civl society massed on the streets of Glasgow, itās worth unpacking some of the details of what was really agreed, or not. How does the jargon translate into real world outcomes, literally of life and death? In these details we can see beneath the media spin and glossy announcements the brutal realities of power, money, and neocolonialism.
1.5C āon life supportā
As the window of opportunity is closing to stay within 1.5C heating and avoid the worst climate catastrophe, where are we left as COP26 ends?
Under the Paris climate deal, nations had to submit updated voluntary commitments to climate action (known as nationally determined contributions or NDCs) before the talks. Unsurprisingly, these are generally lacking in substance or urgency. Many lack clear deliver plans and delay meaningful change until after 2030. Climate Action Trackerās useful analysis finds that even with all new pledges for 2030, we will still emit roughly twice as much in 2030 as required for 1.5C.
They estimate if all current pledges for emissions cuts by 2030 are met, this gives only a 50% chance of staying below 2.4C.
Of course 1.5C itself is no āsafe levelā. Many areas have already experienced devastating wildfires, floods, hurricanes and heatwaves at 1.1C. These, in combination with longer-term impacts such as drought, disproportionately affect countries who have done least to cause the problem and have fewest resources to deal with them.
The Department for Transport has finally published its plan, Decarbonising Transport: A Better, Greener Britain. In terms of aviation, the proposals are hugely disappointing, extremely limited and essentially a charter for the industry, desperate to recover from the pandemic, to build back the same. Many colleagues in environmental and analytical organisations are preparing detailed responses, based on flight numbers, the viability or otherwise of so-called sustainable fuels and climate impact statistics. While these are much needed dissections that provide the ammunition with which to call for more radical action, there is also a need to remind ourselves of the fundamentals, a plain English telling of where we are and where we need to go.
First, technical and scientific solutions to the climate impact of aviation are to be welcomed. No one would disagree with that ā a successful call for a reduction in the amount of flying would not exclude us from wanting to see whatever flying remains from being carried out in a more climate friendly way. Whether alternative fuels, aircraft technology, or a combination of both, in principle we would welcome investment aimed at the development of such solutions.
Fatal delay
What we do object to is that these solutions are used as industry greenwash that ignores reality in order to justify the continuation (or restoration) of business as usual. All actors agree, including government and industry, that viable solutions will not be available till the late 2030s at best, maybe the 2040s, or even 2050. Many of the solutions currently proposed are either āfalseā (i.e. create as many problems as they solve) or āneed workā (i.e. unproven, requiring more R&D). In particular, synthetic or so-called sustainable fuels are either a long way off development, are expensive and energy intensive to use, are impossible to scale up, or produce more emissions than conventional kerosene.
So we are looking to some future time for the possible advent of alternative ways of flying, hence the DfT commits to ānet zero domestic aviation by 2040ā and net zero for all aviation by 2050. Even leaving aside the problematic nature of the term ānet zeroā that is a long way off.
In the meantime plans for traffic growth, and associated airport expansions, remain. These have nothing to do with such solutions and are purely about an increase in fossil fuelled flying, including recovery to 2019 levels by 2025 and then continuing to grow thereafter ā more flights in 2026, more in 2027, 2028 and so on.
We should ask:
i.How does such growth in emissions square with a climate emergency for which radical action is needed by 2030 to keep within 1.5C (clue: it doesnāt), and
Wendy Smith is a Unite member, member of CACCTU and one of the founders of Norfolk Campaign against Climate Change.
People have been shocked at the recent news of deaths from extreme heat and flooding across the globe. Three of the worldās wealthiest men have been racing into space in an effort to find new sources of profit. Meanwhile our government here seems determined to rush the UK into a return to pre-pandemic business as usual. There has never been a more urgent need to fight for effective action in the face of climate catastrophe. The COP26 talks in Glasgow in November present our world leaders with a vital and timely opportunity to deliver more than vague targets and future promises.
The Campaign against Climate Change Trade Union group (CaCCTU) will be launching this autumn the eagerly-awaited update to their groundbreaking pamphlet, āOne Million Climate Jobsā, first published in 2004. At the heart of this new report is a core model for a new public service ā a National Climate Service ā that can get the job done by seeing to the integration of training, redeployment, planning and the interface between sectors (e.g., between industries and energy, or the complex planning needed to integrate and balance public transport).
The Climate Jobs campaign argues we need a sustainable transformation of construction, transport and power among other sectors. Several unions organise workers in these industries and, in order to win the changes we need, these unions should get behind these demands, building support for a transition of the economy and for massive investment in well paid jobs which tackle the climate emergency. In particular, Unite, one of the biggest unions in the Britain, can play a crucial role. Unite is in the process of electing a new General Secretary.
It's never been clearer that the climate crisis is here now. Below are news stories from just the past month describing extreme weather events and catastrophes from around the world. UPDATED 28 July
Some events are so extreme they could have not have occurred without climate breakdown, in other regions there is a trend of increasing frequency/severity. These events, alongside much worse predictions by scientists, should be enough to push world leaders into action on climate. But at best we see only half-measures and delay. Less than 100 days remain until the COP26 summit, and the UK government is issuing new oil drilling licences while ignoring the gap between its emissions targets and a lack of policies to meet them. We have to speak out and ensure the voices of those on the front lines of climate change are heard.
āNowhere is safeā: heat shatters vision of Pacific north-west as climate refuge. A 'heat dome' brought unprecedented heat to the US Pacific north-west and western Canada. Known for mild summers, cities were unprepared for record temperatures of up to 42.2C (Seattle) and 46.7C (Portland, Oregon). Some inland areas managed to get up to 118F (47.8C). Hospitals suddenly found themselves overwhelmed, with several hundred people believed to have died in the heat. The town of Lytton shattered the previous heat record for Canada (45C), reaching 49.5C before residents fled a devastating wildfire, which destroyed large parts of the town. Temperature records are usually broken by fractions of degrees.
Tony Staunton is a member of the Campaign against Climate Change steering group and one of the founding members of the Resist G7 coalition, initiated by grassroots activists in Cornwall and the South West. Here he sets out how climate justice is not on the table at the G7 and the need to resist.
The G7 is a meeting of the world's most powerful political leaders, scheduled for 11th-13th June 2021 in the UK. These leaders govern the richest countries in the world in their own interests, and the G7 exists to keep it that way.
These government ministers will sit behind military security to meet at a luxury hotel complex in one the most picturesque but poorest regions of Europe - Cornwall. Resetting the global economy after the Pandemic will be the key discussion throughout, with the Climate Emergency centre-fold and used to dominate the media with messages of new economic growth through questionable "Green Technologies", promoted by billionaire Bill Gates and his ilk.
Global capitalism - the neoliberal free-market domination of the transnational corporations for agrochemicals, industrial agriculture, biofuels, together with the so-called Negative Emissions Technology (NET) of Carbon-Capture-and-Storage, mini-nuclear power plants and carbon trading - is the default setting.
The G7 wealthiest nations, hosted by UK Prime Minister Johnson, has invited India's Prime Minister Modi, currently assaulting millions of small farmers to enforce corporate dominance of food markets, and Australia's Morrison, the coal and uranium enthusiast.
The headlines from the G7 will be a prelude to what can be expected from the COP26 deliberations in November, once again led by the UK.
The Campaign against Climate Change is supporting the Resist G7 Coalition established soon after the venue was announced. Based in Cornwall, England, the Coalition has issued the call for action in every community, town and city with a day of action for Climate on Friday 11th June and an international manifestation of opposition to G7 neoliberalism on Saturday12th.
Local protests will take place in Cornwall, with convergence centres and counter-conferences in Penzance and Falmouth. The continuing risk from COVID variants makes the long journey to Cornwall by coach unsafe, and any physical protests called by the Coalition will seek to ensure ensure social distancing and personal protection.
