From deadly heat waves, flooding, forest fires, drought, to melting ice caps in the Arctic and species extinctions, humans are “unequivocally” and “without a doubt” to blame for our planet’s extreme weather events and global warming, according to the latest landmark climate change report released by the UN on Monday.
What’s worse is that we may be running out of time.
Global warming has almost reached the point of no return, according to the report. Human activity has changed the Earth’s climate in unprecedented and already “irreversible” ways.
The major scientific report, released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a body of the UN, was built on more than three decades of research, over 14,000 research studies, authored by 234 climate scientists from 66 countries, and took eight years in the making. The report came to one unanimous, sound conclusion: if we do not make the drastic changes now, there would be irreparable consequences in the future.
The scientists also say that a major catastrophe can still be avoided – only if we act fast, and now. The world has to come together to reduce rapid and large-scale reductions in emissions, the authors said, in order to keep the rise in global temperatures below 2.0 degrees Celsius during the 21st century. It also must pursue critical efforts in keeping the global temperature under the threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius.
“If we do not halt our emissions soon, our future climate could well become some kind of hell on Earth,” said Professor Tim Palmer of the University of Oxford.
“The report is a code red for humanity,” described UN Secretary-General António Guterres in a statement on Monday. “The alarm bells are deafening,” the Secretary-General said. “This report must sound a death knell for coal and fossil fuels, before they destroy our planet.”
The damages that we are seeing now, from the deadly heat waves, major floodings, to hurricanes, will only become more severe and catastrophic in the decades, if not centuries to come.
“It’s just guaranteed that it’s going to get worse,” said Linda Mearns, a senior climate scientist at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research and co-author of the IPCC report, affecting millions with “Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.”
Two further instalments from the sixth IPCC assessment, one on the impacts of the climate crisis and the other on ways to mitigate the risks, would be released in 2022. But the scientists have already concluded on one thing: only drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions in this decade can prevent us from the climate catastrophe.
What is the IPCC report and why must we care?
The IPCC was formed in 1988 with the body of the world’s leading climate experts, endorsed by the world’s governments and is considered one of the most comprehensive reports on the state of our knowledge in objective scientific information relevant to understanding human-induced climate change.
Each report is extensively researched, runs to a thousand pages covering the full spectrum of human knowledge and data on the Earth’s climate, and is produced roughly every seven years, which makes the latest report the sixth assessment so far.
Scientists have been warning about rising global warming and greenhouse gas emissions ever since the first report was released in 1990. Subsequent reports following the first one have all notedly pointed out the Earth’s worsening climate catastrophe, but changes have been slow to materialize and “repeatedly ignored” by the public and governmental bodies around the world for decades. The pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions, for example, have been “nowhere near enough” to start reducing the level of greenhouse gases, which are mostly from burning fossil fuels accumulated in the atmosphere.
The latest report marks one of the most precise and grim findings yet. Ever since 1970, the Earth’s global surface temperatures have risen faster than in any other 50-year period during the past 2,000 years, the authors said. The report has also made clear that those repeated years of inaction and human activity have “unequivocally” warmed the planet to the point of no return. Some changes to the planetary support systems, according to the scientists, are already irreversible on timescales of centuries to millennia.
These are some examples of many, but some consequences of the crisis have already been locked in, according to the report. Oceans will continue to warm and become more acidic, killing more wildlife and further destroying the Earth’s ecosystems. It is “virtually certain” that global sea levels will continue to rise and will “remain elevated for thousands of years,” as a result of ocean warming, according to the report.
Mountains and polar glaciers will continue to melt, causing a rise in sea levels, as well as thawing the permafrost on the Earth’s surface and potentially thawing long-dormant diseases and microbes, which could lead to what scientists now call “permafrost pandemic.”
Human activity and inaction are to blame
Since 2015, 197 countries — nearly every nation on Earth — have endorsed the Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty on climate change and have pledged to keep the global surface temperature well below 2.0 degrees Celsius and just up to 1.5 degrees Celsius in the 21st century.
But according to the report and based on all the emissions scenarios considered by the leading scientists of the IPCC, both targets will surely be broken during this century unless drastic cuts in carbon are to take place.
“The consequences will continue to get worse for every bit of warming,” said Professor Ed Hawkins of the University of Reading, UK, one of the report’s co-authors. “And for many of these consequences, there’s no going back.”
“It is a statement of fact, we cannot be any more certain; it is unequivocal and indisputable that humans are warming the planet,” said Professor Ed Hawkins.
“If we combine forces now, we can avert climate catastrophe. But, as the report makes clear, there is no time for delay and no room for excuses.” said the UN chief António Guterres.
The global temperature is currently at 1.1 degrees Celsius. This warming, of course, is already felt everywhere in all corners of the globe. But the future will look even worse. No one will be able to escape or run away from the rising temperatures, floods, scorching wildfires and searing droughts in the next decade.
World reacts
“If this IPCC report doesn’t shock you into action, it should,” said Helen Mountford, the Vice President of Climate and Economics at the World Resources Institute. “The report paints a very sobering picture of the unforgiving, unimaginable world we have in store if our addiction to burning fossil fuels and destroying forests continues.”
Every single choice now matters, according to Helen Clarkson, the CEO of the Climate Change group representing 220 regional governments and 300 multinational businesses, which covers over 1.75 billion people and around 50 per cent of the economy. “Every decision, every investment, every target, needs to have the climate at its core,” she said as a response to the report.
“The world must come together before the ability to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is out of reach,” said US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry in response to the IPCC report. “What the world requires now is real action. We can get to the low carbon economy we urgently need, but time is not on our side.” The US, meanwhile, has already seen a set of new records of heat this summer throughout parts of the country. Some lawmakers fear that this is just the beginning.
The UN is set to host the 26th Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland on October 31 – November 12, 2021, where the leaders hope for much more sound and ambitious climate actions from the nations around the world, as well as a budget to go with it.
Glasgow must be a “turning point” in the crisis, the top international climate official of Biden said, all major economies must commit to “aggressive” action on climate change during the next decade.
“Our people are dying in vulnerable developing countries because of fossil fuel burning for consumption and economic growth in rich countries,” said Mohamed Nasheed, former Maldives president and ambassador for the Climate Vulnerable Forum consisting of 48 countries. “We are paying with our lives for the carbon someone else emitted. We will take measures soon to begin to address this injustice, which we cannot merely accept.”
“The science is crystal clear but the response is not. Investors must use their influence to push decision makers to make the bold emission reductions required to limit the most severe consequences of climate change,” said Wai-Shin Chan, the Global Head Climate of Environmental, Social, and Governance Research at HSBC.
Where does Thailand fit in all this?
If you think Thailand is exempt from all of this, then you are wrong. There’s a reason why the country’s been facing one of its worst droughts, forest fires, flooding, and heat waves in decades — and more frequently so too.
With a population of around 70 million and its geographic location, Thailand is actually particularly vulnerable to climate change. The country was ranked 22nd on the list of nations with the highest greenhouse gas emissions in 2018 and was placed 10th in the most affected countries from climate change in 2017.
The country, however, has been committed to cutting its emissions by around 20 – 30 per cent by 2030. During the COP25 conference in 2019, it was reported that the country has successfully achieved a total of 14 per cent greenhouse gas emission reduction in 2017 in the energy and transport sectors.
“This doubled the amount of our unconditionally Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Action (NAMA) pledge of 7 per cent compared to Business as usual (BAU),” said H.E. Mr. Varawut Silpa-archa. Minister of Natural Resources and Environment of the Kingdom of Thailand during the COP25 conference. “To enhance our post 2020 actions, we are strengthening our system, building our capacity and putting in place necessary NDC mitigation and adaptation architectures to align our domestic actions with the Paris Agreement goal.”
Among others, the Thai Office of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy and Planning (ONEP) is already collaborating with other local governmental and international agencies, the civil society and the private sector in its effort to push for more climate policy movements such as: Thailand Climate Change Master Plan (2015-2050); Thailand’s National Determined Contributions; Thailand’s NDC Roadmap on Mitigation 2021-2030; Thailand’s National Adaptation Plan; and the NDC Sectoral Action Plans (formulated by individual sectors).
In order for these efforts to take place, all relevant parties, including the citizens, must be committed to serious, long-term action.
Thailand is set to join the COP26 global climate change conference this coming October. With these goals and commitments set in place, the country must continue to cooperate and commit its efforts in carbon neutrality once and for all.
