Those hoping for good news about the effects of climate change are not going to find it here.
Runaway growth in the emission of greenhouse gases is swamping all political efforts to deal with the problem, raising the risk of “severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts” over the coming decades, according to a draft of a major new United Nations report.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a UN panel of over 800 scientists and climate experts that periodically assesses and updates the state of climate research, will release its summary "synthesis" report in October. A draft version of the report, still subject to final editing, was provided to member governments this week and a copy was obtained by the
New York Times. While much of the research underlying the synthesis document can be found in the IPCC's
three Working Group Reports released during the past year, the summary and conclusions carry particular weight and are presented in starker language designed to motivate lawmakers from those countries that choose to pay attention.
The report notes that the world has already nearly warmed to a temperature that will permanently melt the ice sheet over Greenland, a process which, although it could take centuries, would raise sea levels over 23 feet. Coupled with melting Antarctic ice, many nations with low lying coastal areas will either disappear or become unrecognizable in mere seconds of geologic time.
Meanwhile, the impact is being felt even as you read this:
Global warming is already cutting grain production by several percentage points, the report found, and that could grow much worse if emissions continue unchecked. Higher seas, devastating heat waves, torrential rain and other climate extremes are also being felt around the world as a result of human emissions, the draft report said, and those problems are likely to intensify unless the gases are brought under control.
While the immediate and overwhelming focus of the IPCC reports is the need to curb the continuing use of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas, the Report obliquely acknowledges that for that to occur humans are going to have to find a way to change their fundamental views of consumption. Because after all is said and done, the problem is
ourselves:
The report confirmed a familiar litany of risks likely to be intensified by continued emissions of heat-trapping gases, primarily carbon dioxide released by the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas.
The report found that companies and governments had identified reserves of these fuels at least four times larger than could safely be burned if global warming is to be kept to a tolerable level.
That means if society wants to limit the risks to future generations, it must find the discipline to leave the vast majority of these valuable fuels in the ground, the report said.
In all of human history, there has never been an instance of humans leaving anything "valuable" in the ground. And the report finds that, true to form, political efforts to rein in fossil fuel consumption are being overwhelmed by efforts in developing nations to extract as much as possible, as fast as possible, from the ground. In the United States, the
Times notes, the federal government's "paralysis" (meaning the complete domination of one of the two major political parties by fossil fuel interests) has effectively ceded the climate issue to a few dramatically affected states. And while emissions in most highly developed nations are slowly falling, that decrease does not offset the rapid industrialization of developing populations attempting to pull themselves out of poverty.
China is often cited by those who resist action to curb greenhouse emissions in the U.S. Why should we have to incur the cost of diminished fossil fuel use if our greatest economic competitor is actually the biggest offender? That argument ignores the fact that China is producing the materials and goods that stock all of our stores, because the companies that sell those goods can earn more profits from goods manufactured in China. As China continues to churn out our laptops and furniture and toys the percentage of greenhouse emissions has risen exponentially, and most strikingly in the last ten years. We--and particularly the U.S.-- are literally consuming the world into extinction:
From 1970 to 2000, global emissions of greenhouse gases grew at 1.3 percent a year. But from 2000 to 2010, that rate jumped to 2.2 percent a year, the report found, and the pace seems to be accelerating further in this decade.
A major part of the jump was caused by industrialization in China, which now accounts for half the world’s coal use. Those emissions are being incurred in large part to produce goods for consumption in the West.
The IPCC's choice of language has also undergone a
bleak transformation as the gravity of the unfolding disaster is brought into focus:
The 127-page document includes a 32-page summary and is filled with language highlighting the dangers from rising temperatures. Those include damage to crop production, rising sea levels, melting glaciers and more pervasive heatwaves. The report mentions the word “risk” more than 350 times; “vulnerable” or “vulnerability” are written 61 times; and “irreversible” comes up 48 times.
It makes one wonder what words will suffice in ten years' time.
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