It has been looking that way for some time as any climate activist keeping abreast of the situation will tell you.
As the United Nations (UN) reported recently, the world isn’t moving fast enough to cut pollution and keep warming below two degrees Celsius.
Two degrees! We aren’t even at 1.5 yet (Paris Agreement limit) and the planet is on fire with devastating disasters in multiple locations worldwide. It is a long list just for this past summer alone with billions, if not trillions, of dollars in damage and many lives lost.
The UN report also touches on many well-understood facts of the climate crisis. Renewable energy must be dramatically scaled up, unabated fossil fuels must be phased out, more effort is needed to adapt to global warming already locked in, and trillions of dollars need to be spent to finance the steps required to hold global warming to 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels.
For Canada in particular, the fossil fuel industry is pushing carbon capture, but the UN warns that the geophysical, environmental/ecological, economic, technological, sociocultural and institutional challenges of carbon capture remain unresolved. Rather than risking our future on expensive, unproven technologies, we need to stop fossil fuel expansion and make way for long-term climate solutions.
We now have COP28 in late November in Dubai to anticipate. What will be accomplished there?
A “global stock take” will be measure how quickly the world’s nations are meeting the emission reduction goals set out in the Paris Agreement. The current report warns there is a rapidly narrowing window to raise ambition and implement existing commitments, but the world is currently not in line with the temperature targets outlined in the Paris Agreement, which aims to keep global temperatures well below two degrees Celsius, and ideally below the critical warming threshold of 1.5 degrees.
Experts say COP28 represents a pivotal moment for the globe to collectively rise to the occasion, as climate-driven extreme weather and deadly heat has battered countries all over the world. Past COPs have been largely underwhelming as the economic powers that be, including the fossil fuel industry, continue to wield their destructive existential influence. Let’s hope this one will be different.
As federal minister of environment and climate change Stephen Guilbeault stated on CBC Radio recently in an interview with Laura Lynch, “we are all to blame.” The unspoken handoff is to all of us to do everything we can to reduce our own carbon emissions.
The target presented internationally and locally, as in the ninth issue of CAPR-icorn, (newsletter of qathet Climate Alliance) is 50 per cent emissions reduction by 2030. This is approximately what will be required worldwide in order to meet or stay under the Paris Agreement goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius average planetary temperature increase above pre-industrial times.
Anyone who is not already, start thinking about how you are going to get that done in six years…or less.
William Lytle-McGhee is a member of qathet Climate Alliance. For information about the organization, go to qathetclimatealliance.ca.
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