The summary of nine years of IPCC work on climate sounds Monday as a stark reminder of the need for humanity to finally take radical action in this crucial decade to ensure “a future worth living.”
This synthesis, which follows that of 2014 and will have no equivalent in the current decade, is “a survival guide for humanity,” stressed United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres.
“This report is a message of hope,” Hoesung Lee, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told AFP.
“We have the know-how, the technology, the tools, the financial resources and everything we need to overcome the climate problems we have identified”, but “what is currently lacking is the strong political will to do it once and for all.” Something to solve for everyone,” says the Korean economist.
This scientific consensus of the IPCC will be the factual basis for the intensive political and economic negotiations in the coming years. Starting with December’s UN climate summit in Dubai, COP28, which will take stock of each country’s efforts under the Paris Agreement and negotiate tough on the future of fossil fuels.
During the long IPCC discussion sessions in Switzerland over the weekend, Saudi Arabian negotiators struggled to water down judgments on the central role of fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal). The space given to the legitimacy of carbon capture technologies in the 36-page “Summary for Decision Makers” is bearing its mark, according to some observers, who see it as a potential “license to burn.”
Global warming will reach 1.5°C compared to the pre-industrial era of 2030-2035, the IPCC warns, while average temperatures have already risen by nearly 1.2°C.
This projection applies to almost all scenarios of human greenhouse gas emissions in the short term, given their accumulation over the past century and a half.
The CO2 emissions that would come from existing fossil fuel infrastructure if not equipped with capture means would be enough to bring the world towards 1.5°C.
But “a deep, rapid and sustained reduction in emissions (…) would result in a visible slowdown in global warming in about two decades,” writes the group of scientists, also on behalf of the UN.
“This summary report underscores the urgency to take more ambitious action and shows that if we act now, we can still ensure a future worth living for all,” said IPCC President Hoesung Lee.
“For any level of future warming, many climate-related risks are higher than those estimated in the previous 2014 summary report,” the scientists write.
They are based on the recently observed increase in extreme weather events such as heat waves and new scientific knowledge, for example on corals.
“Due to the inevitable rise in sea levels, risks to coastal ecosystems, people and infrastructure will continue to increase beyond 2100,” they also point out.
The issue of the “losses and damages” caused by global warming, which some countries, especially the poorest, have already suffered, will be one of the topics for discussion at COP28.
“Climate justice is crucial because those who have least contributed to climate change are disproportionately affected,” said Aditi Mukherji, one of the authors of the synthesis.
“The hottest years we’ve seen so far will be among the coolest in a generation,” summarizes Friederike Otto, co-author of the synthesis, for AFP, which depicts this reality through a more or less dark red colored graphic.
“Some things are easier to sell to governments if they’re presented in infographics” rather than explicitly in the text, she explains.
The past eight years have already been the world’s hottest on record. This means that they will be among the coolest of the century in the future, regardless of the level of greenhouse gas emissions.
This observation underscores the need to combine efforts to adapt to climate change and reduce emissions to avoid making it worse.
“The economic and social benefit of limiting global warming to 2°C exceeds the costs of the measures to be taken,” assure the experts.
But any further delay would increase the step that needs to be taken, the IPCC notes, while the world is already benefiting from the rapid advance of renewable energy.
“From 2010 to 2019, the cost of solar power (85%), wind power (55%), and lithium batteries (85%) all fell sustainably,” the synthesis recalls.
In addition to the effect on the climate, accelerated and sustained efforts would “bring many positive side effects, especially for air quality and health,” write the scientists, who do not hide the price to be paid: “In the short term, in the long term are measures with high initial investments and possibly radical changes tied together”.