In early August 2021, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a scientific body under the United Nations released a major new report that the word cannot avoid some devastating impacts of climate change, but it suggests that there is still a narrow window to keep the devastation from getting worse.
Some of the key points raced in the report are:
It raises without doubt that “it is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land”. Observed increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are directly tied to human activity largely the burning of coal, oil and other fossil fuels as the world industrialised. These emission have increased greatly over time and continue today, as the world becomes warmer. The impacts are being felt in every corner of the world.
Secondly, it warns that the world has already warmed above 1.1 degree Celsius since the 19th century. The report warns that humans have put so much carbon dioxides and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that this warming will continue at least until the middle of the century, even if nations take immediate steps today to sharply cut emissions.
Even in Malaysia, we are certainly facing the effects of climate change. We are suffering torrential rain and flooding in August which previously used to be the hottest months in the year. Further, flooding is occurring in areas that had never faced flooding before.
This means that the climate change effects that the world is seeing now – extreme draughts, severe heat waves, catastrophic flooding – will continue to worsen at least for the next 30 years. The enormous ice sheets in Greenland and West Antarctica will continue to melt through the end of the century. Global sea level will continue to rise for at least 2,000 years.
Thirdly, the report found that climate changes are happening rapidly, faster that had ever been predicted. They found that some of the changes are greater than they have ever been compared with previous periods. For example, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, is greater than any time in the past two million years.
These changes were happening more quickly now than even in the much more recent past. The rate of sea-level has doubled since 2006. Heat waves on land have become significantly hotter since 1950 and marine heat waves – bursts of extreme heat in the ocean that can kill marine life- have doubled in frequency in the past four decades.
Finally, the report suggested possible actions that humans take to reduce the emissions that cause warmings. With the measures taken, the world will reach the 1.5 degrees Celsius – the more ambitious of the targets set by the Paris climate change agreement in 2015 by 2040. (1.5°C is the target limit set out in the Paris Agreement. This agreement aims to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by limiting global temperature rise in the 21st century to 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to curb it further to an increase of 1.5°C).
The report suggests that aggressive, rapid and widespread emission cuts, beginning now could limit the warming beyond 2050. In the most optimistic scenario, reaching “net zero” emissions could even bring warming back slightly under 1.5 degree Celsius in the second half of the century. Net-zero emissions will be achieved when all greenhouse gases emissions released by humans are counterbalanced by removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere in a process known as carbon removal for example through restoring forests.
Such a commitment would require a level of political will that most governments have so far been unable to muster.
