Inspired by a wave of climate activism, national leaders were expected to come up with more ambitious new plans on how to reduce emissions over the next decade.
The COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, would be the first real test of their determination to do what they had been promised, in the framework of the Paris agreement.
The coronavirus pandemic has derailed these plans and given some governments a new excuse to stop. But the Covid-19 has definitely not stopped climate change.
The pandemic has also shown the world that great, previously unthinkable changes are possible.
Despite global unrest, several of the world’s major pollutants raised their long-term climate goals, placing the world at a surprising distance from the goal of the Paris Agreement: to reduce emissions and limit global warming. at well below 2 degrees Celsius.
Experts are cautiously optimistic.
“It is now recognized that when it comes to the world’s major economies, they can intervene and correct these market failures,” said Mike Davis, CEO of Global Witness, an NGO that focuses on human rights, climate and the environment. environment. “We’ve seen it to some extent in response to Covid, and maybe that has started to dispel this myth that we’re essentially all slaves to the free market, [and] there is nothing we can do about it. ”
Devastating impacts
The effects of climate change have become more difficult than ever to ignore in 2020.
But global warming is just one aspect of the climate crisis.
“The main impacts of climate change have been felt due to drought, floods, rising sea levels, stronger tropical storms, hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones and also the melting of glaciers.” , told WNN Petteri Taalas, WMO Secretary General.
In the first six months of this year, nearly 10 million people were forced to leave their homes due to disasters caused or worsened by climate change, according to the Geneva Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC). For some the move was temporary, but many face long-term displacement.
India, Bangladesh and the Philippines were the three most affected countries, accounting for more than 6 million trips between them.
Developing countries are often disproportionately affected by the impacts of climate change due to their location and lack of access to funds and technologies that could help mitigate the effects.
But in 2020 it proved that no country is immune to this disruption. Hundreds of thousands of people in some of the richest countries in the world were forced to leave their homes, losing their livelihoods – and sometimes their lives – due to fires, storms and floods. An estimated 53,000 people in the US and 51,000 more in Australia were displaced in the first six months of the year alone.
And wherever these disasters happen, the poorest suffer even more, according to Alexandra Bilak of the IDMC.
“Even in high-income countries (in California for example) there are people who didn’t have access to insurance and lost everything, and they’re the ones who worry us especially because they’re the ones who are going to end up in very difficult situations. prolonged where their vulnerabilities will increase, ”he said.
Light of hope
The effects of climate change were devastating in 2020, but could become even more disastrous if global warming continues in line with current trends.
The WMO says there is now at least one in five chances that global average temperatures will temporarily exceed pre-industrial levels by 1.5 degrees Celsius in 2024, a critical threshold in the Paris Agreement.
Under the agreement, most of the world agreed to limit warming below 2 degrees Celsius and try to keep it at 1.5 degrees.
“We are already warming 1.2 degrees and the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] he says that for the welfare of mankind and also for the welfare of the biosphere, the 1.5 degree target would be further favored, ”Taalas said.
“With the 2 degree target, we would see more negative impacts of climate change, it would harm global food production capacity, there would be many coastal cities that would suffer sea level rise and we would see more Category 4 and 5 hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones. “
Global greenhouse gas emissions should fall by 45% from 2010 levels by 2030 if there is any possibility of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius and 25% to keep it below of the 2 degrees, according to the IPCC.
The good news, Taalas said, is that we have the technological and economic means to achieve these goals. The bad news? Most countries have not yet adopted concrete plans to get there.
To meet climate targets, emissions must decrease by at least the same amount (approximately 7.6%) each year over the next decade. There is the possibility of this happening.
“Until recently, I guess everyone had been pretty depressed by the way climate change policies and actions were being developed,” Climate Analytics CEO Bill Hare told CNN.
Hare said there has been a comprehensive slowdown in action due to the pandemic: “Political momentum seemed to be running out, but in the last six or eight weeks, especially since September, when Chinese President Xi Jinping announced China’s move to zero net emissions by 2060, the whole mood has changed. ”
South Africa, Japan, South Korea and Canada have announced new net targets for 2050, following promises from China, the EU and the UK.
According to the Climate Action Tracker’s analysis, these new promises place the world at a surprising distance from the goal of the Paris Agreement. The tracker, a partnership between the NewClimate Institute and Climate Analytics, said current plans would translate into 2.1 degrees of warming by 2100.
But the new promises are this: it promises to achieve something in three decades, when most current governments will disappear.
“The acid test is whether or not countries will really step up action in the short term by 2030,” Hare said.
The 2050 and 2060 goals are steps in the right direction and should not be underestimated, but what really matters is what governments are doing now. The next decade will be the real time to make or break.