COP26: Failure to fight climate change will cause terrible human suffering, UN chief warns.
While President Joe Biden struggles to get past haggling in Congress to advance his climate change agenda, the world is moving several steps closer to climate catastrophe.
The United Nations environment program reports that a global temperature rise of 2.7 degrees Celsius is very likely during this century if governments fail to agree on urgently implementing concrete measures at the two-week COP26 climate summit starting in Glasgow, Scotland, on October 31.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres says this latest warning is a code red. “If governments do not stand up and lead this effort, we are headed for terrible human suffering.”
“All countries need to realize that the old, carbon-burning model of development is a death sentence for their economies and for our planet. We need decarbonization now, across every sector in every country.”
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns that the atmosphere has already absorbed so much carbon dioxide that more floods, droughts, famines and fires are inevitable failing resolute action at COP26 and beyond.
A separate report from Lancet, a prestigious health magazine, calls climate change the “defining narrative of human health”. Climate crises will cause widespread hunger, respiratory illness, deadly disasters and infectious disease outbreaks that could be worse than COVID-19.
In this context, Biden is fighting the right battle despite the pickaxes striking at his $3.5 trillion proposal, which includes vigorous measures to slow down climate change.
The scientific evidence of climate change is overwhelming. Pollution kills nine million people every year. Every day, dozens of species go extinct. Scorching temperatures are turning farmlands into parched landscapes. Cities and entire countries are watching sea levels rise around them.
Guterres called the situation “a truly existential crisis that — if not addressed — threatens not only us but succeeding generations”.
The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate agreed to keep global warming below 2.1°C and preferably under 1.5°C. But the International Energy Agency (IEA) reports that the commitments made so far for COP26 give a 50% chance to reach the higher target and only a 5% chance to achieve the lower target. Reaching “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050 will speed up the 1.5°C target.
China accounts for 28% of global carbon-dioxide emissions that cause global warming, which is slightly more than the US and EU combined, while India despite its size is responsible for 7%.
A rich country promise made in Paris to provide $100 billion annually by 2020 to support climate change actions in poorer countries has also been broken. Now, the IEA believes that an annual investment of about $2 trillion is needed in developing countries while some other experts estimate a minimum $1 trillion yearly.
These are impossible ambitions because rich countries just cannot afford so much for so long while most developing countries do not have the capabilities to handle such large investments.
The core necessities to avoid climate catastrophe are to drastically reduce use of fossil fuels, mainly coal, oil and gas for producing electricity, and to cut emissions of methane caused mostly by natural gas production, agriculture and livestock. A lot of hope is being placed on replacing fossil fuel usage by high-tech renewable low carbon sources like wind and solar energy. But the outlook is not encouraging.
For instance in 2019, 84.3% of global energy consumption came for oil, coal and gas while other sources provided 15.7%. Wind provided a little more than 2% globally and solar about 1%.
Recently, a sudden energy crisis has emerged particularly in Europe because oil prices have risen by at least 50% while natural gas prices have jumped 500%. A main cause is reductions in investments in fossil fuels because of political pressures to move to renewable sources.
Consequently, a worried EU is considering temporary support for fossil fuel electricity because producing enough low-carbon renewables will take many more years.
Biden is also quietly reducing his opposition to fossil fuels for a period of transition. This may be a reason for his acquiescence to pressure from Senator Joe Manchin to drastically downsize the bill and drop the most powerful part of his climate agenda, a $150 billion clean electricity program that would have incentivized replacing coal and gas-fired power plants with wind, solar and nuclear energy.
For Guterres, a 1.5 degree centigrade future is “the only livable future for humanity”. He wants coal to be phased out by 2030 in developed countries and by 2040 in all other countries.
Disasters associated with climate change are already happening. This year saw huge floods in Europe, Nigeria, Uganda and India; catastrophic wildfires in Greece, Siberia and California; fatal heat waves in the Pacific Northwest; and drought that is drying up rivers and reservoirs.
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