Current policies worldwide are on course to increase CO2 emissions and ‘intensify multiple and concurrent hazards’, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Ian Taylor reports
The world is rapidly approaching “crunch time” on global warming, according to a lead author of the latest UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report published in March.
The Synthesis Report on IPCC assessments since 2018 is written in cautious language but makes alarming reading, not least for travel businesses and destinations.
It warns the risks of warming are greater than thought less than a decade ago, noting “limits to adaptation” have already been reached in some tropical, coastal, polar and mountain regions.
Almost half the world’s population live in regions “highly vulnerable to climate change” and warming is “already affecting weather and climate extremes in every region”.
Yet emissions reductions to date “have only partly offset” the global growth in greenhouse gas emissions, which hit a new record last year.
The IPCC concludes “policies implemented by the end of 2020 are projected to result in higher global emissions in 2030” and warns: “Every increment of global warming will intensify multiple and concurrent hazards.”
However, the report also concludes it’s not too late to acting, noting: “Deep, rapid and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions would lead to a discernible slowdown in global warming within around two decades.”
The authors describe the report as “a final warning”, arguing the tools to address climate change already exist and conclude a lack of political commitment poses the greatest risk to progress.
They suggest governments need to “significantly” enhance emissions reduction targets by bringing the 2050 ‘net zero’ deadline forward as near to 2040 as possible, suggesting: “Choices and actions implemented in this decade will have impacts . . . for thousands of years.”
UN secretary general Antonio Guterres called for “a quantum leap in climate action”, warning: “The climate time-bomb is ticking.”
Report author Detlef van Vuuren said: “It’s crunch time. We’re so close to 1.5C, things need to happen now.”
Carbon emissions must be cut by half by 2030 to have a hope of limiting the average global rise in temperature to the 1.5C target set by the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015.
Existing policies leave the world on course for warming by 3.2C by the end of the century, according to the report, and current emissions-reduction plans would only reduce this to 2.8C.
The report notes investment in coal, oil and gas production remains higher than in sustainable energy and questions the “feasibility and sustainability” of carbon capture technology, touted as a way to ‘clean up’ fossil fuel use.
In just one example of the implications of warming for tourism destinations, the report notes sea level rise will mean “current 1-in-100-year extreme sea level events [will] occur at least annually in more than half of all tide gauge locations by 2100 under all scenarios”.
Tide-gauge locations around the world measure the changing level of tides. There are 40 alone around the UK coastline.
IPCC reports are the product of tortuous exercises in compromise, requiring 100% agreement by thousands of scientists – and their governments – for the conclusions to be signed off.
The report was published as government leaders met to discuss the agenda for the COP28 climate conference due to be held in the UAE at the end of November.
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