Not 20 Years, We Only Have Less Than 10 Years To Tackle Climate Change
The world is rapidly getting hotter and hotter each year, and new research has found that we haven’t put enough effort into easing the situation. You’ve all probably heard that one shocking news in 2018 where scientists predicted that we could, in all likelihood, encounter what people like to call a ‘climate change catastrophe’ soon.
With the rapid increase of global temperature, it was forecasted that the earth would hit the climate change limit of 1.5°C global temperature rise in only 20 years (16 years now). That is like playing Taylor Swift’s 10-minute version of All Too Well for about 8,409,648 times! Jokes aside, the news was very alarming and sent the world into a frenzy, and we’re here to talk about it.
Not only would the polar bears and penguins lose their place to live, we would also be at stake of losing our comfortability living on such a planet. Imagine, the weather would be unpredictable, the sea levels would rise even faster (along with land subsidence due to land water extraction & building formations, but that’s for another discussion), and we haven’t found a place feasible enough to live on. This is something real, and we should care more about this.
What is Left To The World’s Carbon Budget
About 90 climate scientists from 40 different countries participated in the 2018 research, and they concluded that if humans didn’t take immediate actions, we would see the consequences quite literally “baked” into the natural systems of the earth. It is so chilling (pun intended) that we could experience increasing heat waves, longer warm seasons and shorter cold seasons. If that persists, at a rise of 2°C of global warming, we would reach critical tolerance thresholds for agriculture and health.
A recently published study by the journal of Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, though, shared an update about the climate change prediction. The pandemic in 2020 caused a significant reduction of human activities and with that, also a reduction of carbon emissions up to 11%. With things slowly adapting to a new normal in 2021, unfortunately emissions rebounded for about 4.8% from 2020. If the course continues, we only have approximately 9.5 years before we consume the rest of the remaining carbon budget.
In case you didn’t know, carbon budget is the total quantity of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions that can be allowed overtime in order to stay below a given temperature threshold, that is 1.5°C. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or IPCC — shortly, the people who set this carbon budget — have estimated that global carbon emissions must be reduced by 45 percent by 2030, and that net-zero emissions must be achieved by 2050. Although every country in the world has signed on to global agreements (such as Paris Climate Agreement or Glasgow Climate Pact) to make their utmost efforts to not reach 1.5°C of warming, the authors of the Nature paper estimated that it would still be attained in or before 2031 if the current trends continue.
The research also discovered that the biggest contributor to total global carbon emission rebound in 2021 is the aviation sector, whether it’s domestic or international aviation. The fact that countries are now open again, and various tourist destinations are recovering from their pandemic drought, seems like a very dilemmatic situation. For example, Bali. In the last few months Bali has been slowly but surely recovering from the economic crisis that the pandemic brought. Everyone was in a situation where they had to care about their health first and stay at home, while most of the Balinese people relied on tourism to make a living.
Honourable mentions of the 2021 emission contributors include power, industry, and ground transport sectors Collectively, these three sectors contributed 89% to the emission rebound. It is to be expected as well, since the world has now woken up from its slumber in 2020 and is striving for herd immunity and reinforcing new normal living. At the country level, the biggest contributors of 2021 emissions were China, the USA, the 27 European Union countries (EU27) and the UK, India, and Russia.
European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change
In June of 2021, European Climate Law was adopted to formalise the European Green Deal’s goal of making Europe’s economy and society climate-neutral by 2050, that was first set up during the Paris Agreement. The law also establishes an intermediate goal of cutting net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030 compared to 1990 levels. I believe that it is a great action to take, knowing that they’re among the top contributors to the 2021 emissions, and something that the other countries should take note of.
Not just a guideline for the countries, the law also included the establishment of a European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change. The board consists of 15 senior experts with experience in various relevant disciplines. Together, they will offer independent scientific opinion on EU climate initiatives and targets, as well as their compatibility with the European Climate Law and the EU’s international responsibilities under the Paris Agreement.
With the board members finally appointed yesterday, March 24th 2022, The Advisory Board will base its conclusions on the best available and most recent scientific evidence, including the IPCC’s and other national and international organisations’ most recent studies. It will follow a completely transparent procedure and make all of its reports available to the public. A Secretariat maintained by the European Environment Agency will assist the Advisory Board in its activities.
With the Advisory Board finally coming together, it is hoped that they could set a new pace for climate actions and provide information needed for Europe and the rest of the world to help prevent the climate change catastrophe. I surely hope that more climate action boards are established to help with the cause.
Bibliography
European Environment Agency. 2022. European Environment Agency. [online] Available at: <https://www.eea.europa.eu/highlights/new-european-scientific-advisory-board> [Accessed 25 March 2022].
IPCC. 2021. Climate change is widespread, rapid, and intensifying — IPCC. [online] Available at: <https://www.ipcc.ch/2021/08/09/ar6-wg1-20210809-pr/#:~:text=Faster%20warming&text=The%20report%20shows%20that%20emissions,1.5%C2%B0C%20of%20warming .> [Accessed 25 March 2022].
Liu, Z., Deng, Z., Davis, S.J. et al. Monitoring global carbon emissions in 2021. Nat Rev Earth Environ (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-022-00285-w [Accessed 25 March 2022].
Sussams, L., 2018. Carbon Budgets Explained. [online] Carbon Tracker Initiative. Available at: <https://carbontracker.org/carbon-budgets-explained/> [Accessed 25 March 2022].
Turrentine, J., 2018. Climate Scientists to World: We Have Only 20 Years Before There’s No Turning Back. [online] NRDC. Available at: <https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/climate-scientists-world-we-have-only-20-years-theres-no-turning-back> [Accessed 25 March 2022].
