Blog Spot
2/3
The Hawaii data is not the only
item of sobering climate news. A few
months ago, the World Bank issued a
truly frightening report stating:
"Without further commitments
and action to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions, the world is likely to
warm by more than 3°C above the
pre-industrial climate. Even with the
current mitigation commitments and
pledges fully implemented, there is
roughly a 20% likelihood of exceeding
4°C by 2100. If they are not met, a
warming of 4°C could occur as early
as the 2060s".
They added that a further warming
to levels over 6°C, with several metres
of sea-level rise, would likely occur
over the following centuries.
You may want to sit down for the
next bit: A recent report by the Club
of Rome claimed that an increase over
4°C could mean an acceleration of
global warming past tipping points,
eventually diminishing the carrying
capacity of the planet to fewer than a
billion people, not the 7 billion-plus
of us now living!
Now I'm worried I may have lost
you with that last warning. Are such
assertions by experts just unpalatable?
Will people just glaze over, switch off,
ignore the facts and hope the problem
goes away?
Well, it won't. Not unless we do
something.
So what can be done?
First of all, let's not give up on
keeping global warming to less than
2°C above pre-industrial times. Even
though this amount of warming would
cause huge problems, with major
impacts on agriculture in the tropics,
ocean acidification, sea-level rise,
droughts and loss of biodiversity, it's
incomparably better than the plus4°C scenario.
Staying below a 2°C rise will be no
mean feat. It requires us to leave at
least two thirds of proven fossil fuel
reserves in the ground, unless carbon
capture and storage technology is
widely deployed. So it was encouraging
to see, in April, the International
Monetary Fund call for an end to the
$1.9tn in fossil fuel subsidies handed
out worldwide each year.
Speaking as a Welsh resident, it
means we also need to think hard
before we start exploiting even more
