It’s Official, the Climate Emergency That No One Believed Is Here

The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), made up of the leading scientists from more than 120 countries, is an objective and scientific assessment of the natural, political and economic risks humanity faces from the damage it has done to the planet, and as the UN Secretary General warns, it’s code red for humanity.

The evidence is now irrefutable, except of course for the hardcore of reckless numbskulls who despite the fires, floods, hurricanes and other disasters around the world, still deny the reality that we are in the midst of a climate emergency of our own doing. That said, the doubters have been largely silent for some time now, and their insistence that there have always been natural disasters rings increasingly hollow.

The planet’s climate has been destabilized due to human activity over the last two hundred years, and the only thing we can do now to try to mitigate the damage we have done is to immediately stop all activities that generate emissions, whatever the cost and whatever the consequences. To insist that we still have decades to carry out some kind of gradual transition is utterly irresponsible: the planet’s temperature has increased on average by 1.09°C between 2011 and 2020, compared to the level it was in the last half of the nineteenth century.

At last, those who once were unable to understand the difference between the weather at a given moment and the climate resulting from consolidation over a period of time, now seem able to visualize it: the last five years have been the warmest on record since 1850, and phenomena such as extreme heat waves are increasingly commonplace. If you thought the issue did not affect you and you were selfish enough to do nothing because you thought it was not your problem, but that of the next generations, you were wrong: it is more and more likely that some extreme weather phenomenon will endanger you, your property or your way of life.

The oceans are warming, the currents responsible for the climate around the world have been disrupted, the snow on mountain ranges and polar glaciers is largely gone , and the consequences are much worse for every tenth of a degree that the average temperature rises. Fires ravage more and more regions, generating even more carbon dioxide in an ever-worsening spiral. Arctic tundra and forests are now releasing the methane they have retained for millennia. The models that were estimated decades ago or the predictions made — and hidden — by the oil companies are not only proving to be true, they are falling short. This isn’t scaremongering, as some claim: it’s science.

The only chance we have, and it is a window of opportunity that is rapidly closing, is to take immediate and radical action. Some people may still refuse to accept it, but the fact of the matter is that we are in an emergency, so no slow transitions, no decades-long withdrawal plans. What seemed bold ideas a year or two ago, such as banning the sale of diesel and petrol vehicles by 2040 or gradually closing fossil fuel-fired power plants, is now clearly insufficient. Government plans must be readjusted to take account of this new reality, and countries that do not comply must be isolated and penalized. Reality isn’t interested in ideas such as allowing developing countries to burn the fossil fuels that rich countries burned for decades: it may not be fair, but if they do, we are all doomed.

Significant compensation mechanisms will be needed, schemes that make it possible for all countries to transition to clean energy, and to do so not in several decades, but within a few years. We have passed the point of asking politely or of listening to brands and their greenwashing. Simply put, it’s crunch time.

If you think this article is alarmist, you have missed the point. We have blown our chance for a slow transition over several decades. Now it’s about taking radical measures, changing our unsustainable lifestyle, and doing so now, whatever the consequences. Needs must when the devil drives. As many have been saying for a long time now, there is no planet B. We must act now.

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This post was previously published on Medium.

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