According to one of the world’s leading climate scientists, the global climate crisis has reached a “really bleak moment”. Most reports released in the recent days suggest that the world is approaching a dangerous stage.
As Prof Johan Rockström has put it: “very, very close to irreversible changes … time is really running out very, very fast.” For meaningful remedy to be realised, “emissions must fall by about half by 2030 to meet the internationally agreed target of 1.5C of heating”.
The United Nations environment agency’s report, for instance, established that there was “no credible pathway to 1.5C in place” and that “woefully inadequate” progress on cutting carbon emissions means the only way to limit the worst impacts of the climate crisis is a “rapid transformation of societies”.
The high-sounding promises by the major polluters – U.S., China and Europe – to take action by 2030, even if achieved, would mean “a rise in global heating of about 2.5C, a level that would condemn the world to catastrophic climate breakdown, according to the UN’s climate agency. Only a handful of countries have ramped up their plans in the last year, despite having promised to do so at the Cop26 UN climate summit in Glasgow last November.”
On Thursday, Damian Carrington notes, Shell and TotalEnergies both doubled their quarterly profits to about $10bn. Oil and gas giants have enjoyed soaring profits as post-Covid demand jumps and after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The sector is expected to amass $4tn in 2022, strengthening calls for heavy windfall taxes to address the cost of living crisis and fund the clean energy transition.
Similarly, United Nation’s meteorological agency reported that all the main heating gases hit record highs in 2021, with an alarming surge in emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
Rockström, who is also the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, said: “It’s a really bleak moment, not only because of the reports showing that emissions are still rising, so we’re not delivering on either the Paris or Glasgow climate agreements, but we also have so much scientific evidence that we are very, very close to irreversible changes – we’re coming closer to tipping points.”
