Hira Bahadur Thapa

The f the extreme weather conditions that wrought havoc in parts of north-west America and Canada recently were not enough for the world leaders to be serious about curbing the carbon emissions, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s latest report should leave no doubt that we have no choice but to drastically cut down the emissions level without further delay.
Transitioning to clean energy is the best option considering the fact of climate science that fossil fuels burning play a major role in contributing to rising temperatures. But this approach looks easier said than done as the reliance on fossil fuels in big economies, particularly China, is on the increasing trend. It applies to other bigger emitters of the world, including the US, and the European Union. All of these three emitters produce roughly the half of global carbon emissions. Their recent announcements to move to clean energy technologies though raise some optimism.

Warning
The IPCC report suggest that we need to immediately switch from fossil fuels, the dirtiest and most pollutant energy sources, if we wish to avert greater perils. There is clear warning that nations have delayed curbing their fossil-fuel emissions for so long that they can no longer stop global warming from intensifying over the next three decades. There still is a short window to prevent the most harrowing future that awaits catastrophe.
By burning coal, oil and gas to meet energy needs, humans have induced the planet to become hotter. The earth has heated roughly by 1.1 degrees Celsius or 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the 19th century. Resultantly, ill effects have been felt globally. This summer witnessed blistering heat waves killing hundreds of people in the US and Canada, and floods have devastated Germany and China, and wildfires have rages out of control in Siberia, Turkey and Greece.
In the opinion of climate scientists who produced the IPCC report, the above instances of worst consequence are just the beginning. They argue that even if the nations started sharply cutting emissions today, total global warming is likely to rise to around 1.5 degrees Celsius within the next two decades and hence a hotter future that is now essentially locked in. At this level of temperature they have found, the dangers grow considerably.
As a consequence of this warming, nearly one billion people worldwide could swelter in more frequent life-threatening heat waves. Hundreds of millions more would struggle for water because of severe droughts. Some animal and plant species alive today will be extinct. Coral reefs, which sustain fisheries for large swaths of the globe, will suffer more frequent mass die-offs.
Things are likely to get worse than they are today. However, scientists are hopeful that not all is lost if we make efforts collaboratively to stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by around 2050. In this regard, we need to start working immediately to rapidly shift away from consuming fossil fuels and remove vast amounts of carbon from the air. Their sincere hope is that with coordinated endeavours we could prevent the planet from getting even hotter and as a result global warming would probably halt and level off at around 1.5 degrees Celsius.
The IPCC report describes how every extra degree of warming brings far greater perils, such as even more vicious floods and heat waves, worsening droughts and accelerating sea-level rise that could put some island nations’ existence at greater risk. There is clear warning from the scientists that if nations fail in curtailing the level of carbon emissions significantly, global average temperatures will continue rising. Such rise could potentially surpass 2 degrees, 3 degrees or even 4 degrees Celsius, compared with the preindustrial period.
The hotter the earth gets, the greater the risk of crossing dangerous tipping points like the irreversible melting of the immense ice sheets in Greenland and West Antarctica. According to Ko Barrett, a vice chair of the IPCC, there is no going back from some changes in the climate system. But assuredly she adds that immediate and sustained emission reductions could really make a difference in the climate future.

Eye-opener
The comprehensiveness of the panel report is evidenced by the approval of 195 governments based on more than 14,000 studies of the physical science of climate change. IPCC report will be a focal point when diplomats gather in November at a UN summit known as COP-26 in Glasgow to discuss how to step up their efforts to reduce emissions. It should be an eye-opener for all nations whose combined efforts alone can avert the climate disaster that looms so large over earth’s sustainability.
The August 2021 IPCC report leaves no doubt that those humans are responsible for global warming. The scientists argue that essentially the entire rise in global average temperatures since the 19th century has been driven by nations burning fossil fuels, clearing forests as seen in Amazon area, Brazil in the recent years and loading the atmosphere with heat-trapping greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane.
While acknowledging the role of humans in exacerbating the climate crisis we should never forget that the 10 biggest emitters of the world like China, the US, the European Union, India, Russia, Japan, Brazil, Indonesia, Iran and Canada owe greater responsibilities to cut down the carbon emissions. As impacts of climate change are disproportionate, the poor nations deserve financial aid to adapt to and mitigate the adverse consequences of global warming for whose creation they have very negligible roles.

(Thapa was Foreign Policy Advisor to the Prime Minister from 2008-09. thapahira17@gmail.com)