BaCCC/Module 2/Lesson 3/part 2
What everyone should know about the climate emergency and how urgent it is
Climate change creates vicious circles
Climate change exacerbates other issues – and is exacerbated by other issues. To exacerbate means to make a problem or bad situation worse. So, not only do the impacts of climate change make other problems worse, but those problems also make climate change worse.
For example, the impacts of climate change on drought in already politically unstable agricultural regions of the world have exacerbated the refugee crisis. And those conflicts can then exacerbate climate change if forest ecosystems (important carbon sinks) are damaged or destroyed.
Here is another example: Ground-level ozone, also called tropospheric ozone (and often called smog = smoke + fog), forms in the atmosphere when gases emitted from smokestacks and tailpipes mix in the air. Climate change creates conditions, including heat and stagnant air, that increase the risk of unhealthy ozone levels. (Ground-level ozone is damaging to human health and crop health.) Then, in a vicious circle, ozone absorbs radiation and consequently acts as a strong greenhouse gas. Tropospheric ozone affects the climate beyond increased warming, having impacts on evaporation rates, cloud formation, precipitation levels and atmospheric circulation. This is illustrated at the following link:
The multiplier effect or threat multiplier
People need to understand that climate change is not just a bunch of bad weather. Security experts say the hardships caused by climate change can increase the risk of political instability and terrorism. The United States Department of Defence calls climate change a “threat multiplier.”
António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, says,
Climate change is not the source of all ills, but it has a multiplier effect and is an aggravating factor for instability, conflict and terrorism. We must address these challenges in an integrated manner and create a virtuous circle of peace, resilience and sustainable development.
The intergovernmental panel on climate change is conservative
The urgency of the climate emergency cannot be overstated. According to the IPCC, the world’s leading authority on climate science (because it brings together the research of thousands of scientists every six years or so), human-caused greenhouse gas emissions have already caused global temperatures to rise by approximately 1.1°C since pre-industrial times. Because carbon dioxide (a by-product of burning almost anything) remains in the atmosphere for a hundred years or (much) longer once it is added, the global average temperature will keep rising. We must turn off the “tap” and stop pumping the “pump” that keeps CO2 flowing into the atmosphere.
But here is the thing: The IPCC is a very conservative body. That is because after it considers and collates the scientific research, government policymakers (the “intergovernmental” part of its name) have to approve of every word in the IPCC reports (except for its technical reports). What the public ends up seeing is the most conservative possible interpretation of the scientific findings. So, when scientists and policymakers start saying things like “climate change threatens our existence on this planet,” we know it is time to calmly panic and get “all hands on deck.”
If we stay on our current path we risk a sharp rise in global temperatures this century. This will have enormous negative consequences for humanity and threaten our existence on this planet. We need an immediate and urgent change in trajectory. Meeting it is absolutely necessary to the health, safety and security of everyone on this planet – in both the short and long term. — UNFCCC Executive Secretary Patricia Espinosa
It is now unequivocal that human influence is causing climate change, making extreme events more frequent and more severe. Global warming of 1.5°C and 2°C will be exceeded during this century unless immediate, rapid, and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, especially of carbon dioxide and methane, occur in the nearest future. The latest IPCC Report reflects the magnitude of the collective challenge for all nations on this planet. Science shows that changes in the climate are widespread, rapid and becoming more intense and affecting every part of the world. — Hoesung Lee, Chair of the IPCC
The fossil fuel industry has known for decades
Many books and papers have now shown that the big oil companies were told by their own scientists in the 1970s and 80s that global warming and climate change were going to become a problem if their products continued to be burned. Tragically, the “greenwashing” continues to this day, when new fossil fuel projects are proposed and people are told “jobs!” but never told the catastrophic impacts of burning fossil fuels, not to mention the environmental degradation of the land, water and air.
See, for example, America Misled: How the Fossil Fuel Industry Deliberately Misled America About Climate Change (Cook et al., 2019) at https://www.climatechangecommunication.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/America_Misled.pdf
This is an existential emergency
If we continue with business as usual – burning fossil fuels because that is all we know – temperatures could rise by more than 3°C by the end of the century. Given the increasingly extreme weather impacts at 1.1°C, imagine the catastrophic consequences for human societies and the natural world at 3°C. (Honestly, there is a chance that the human species will not survive that kind of temperature rise because of its impacts on agriculture, which is the only food source for practically all 8+ billion of us. This truly is an existential emergency. And much of the rest of life is threatened, too.)
But, but . . .
You may have read somewhere on social media that “climate-related deaths have decreased 98% in the last century.” If you dig deeper, you will discover that there are fewer deaths because of greater development (e.g., concrete buildings) and the advent of disaster early warning systems and forecasting systems, especially in the richer countries of the world. But the destruction is growing costlier (because there is more development to be destroyed). Climate change disasters are still increasing in number, intensity, duration and/or frequency. Some places that could “weather” a disaster before are now being impacted by these new extremes. And when one factors in socio-economic factors, the aftermath of a disaster is sometimes deadlier than the event itself. This whole topic or issue goes deeper than the denier meme that climate-related deaths are down. Never believe a “denier meme” before digging deeper to get to the full truth.
It all comes down to food and water security
People may not be worried about an occasional 100-year flood or 100-year storm (now happening every ten years). But what we all need to worry about are the impacts of climate disruption and destabilisation on agriculture and our water sources. You see, throughout the 11,000-year history of agriculture, the atmospheric concentration level of CO2 and the global climate were quite stable . . . up until the Industrial Revolution, when the burning of fossil fuels really started to increase.
Perhaps our technological innovations can keep up, but parched soil cannot grow very much food. For every 1°C of increased air temperature, the potential of the air to hold moisture increases by 7% – which dries out the land a lot more while also dumping more water when it does rain.
Also, parched soil does not absorb water very well, especially when it rains down in buckets during extreme storms. The water run-off then leads to soil erosion. And we are back to the vicious circles where we started.
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Sometimes it is not the change, but the rate of change that matters most
Practically every indicator of climate change is accelerating. On the graphs, the lines are not calmly climbing in a straight line up. They are curving up, which means they are speeding up. This means we are running out of time to mitigate and adapt to the impacts.
How do we know we can blame climate change?
Attribution science is a new field of study. Attribution scientists study not whether climate change caused an event, but whether climate change made some extreme events more severe and more likely to occur, and if so, by how much. Any weather event can happen by chance, simply as part of the natural variation in weather. But the climate of a region sets the stage for an extreme event, so attribution scientists then probe: Did climate change make this extreme event worse? That is why we see headlines such as the following:
| “Climate change greatly intensified many 2017 weather events” |
| “From droughts to deluges, scientists link 16 extreme events to global warming” |
| “Climate change made 2019 European heat wave worse” |
| “Study finds global warming quintupled the likelihood of this excessive heat” |
| “Marine heat wave would have been ‘virtually impossible’ without human influence” |
It is interesting to note that attribution analyses sometimes find that extreme events have not necessarily been exacerbated by climate change, but rather by the exposure and vulnerability of the population.
The effects of the climate emergency are already being felt around the world, with increasing intensity, frequency and/or duration of heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, floods and storms. These events have devastating impacts on human health, food security and infrastructure, especially in vulnerable communities and regions. (See Module 3 on climate justice and Module 5 on intersectionality.)
Urgent action is required to limit global warming to below 1.5°C and to mitigate the worst impacts of the climate emergency. This includes reducing greenhouse gas emissions, transitioning to renewable energy, protecting and restoring ecosystems and building resilience to climate impacts. The longer we delay action, the more difficult and costly it will be to address the climate emergency, and the more deadly the impacts will become. (See Module 4 on mitigation and Module 6 on adaptation.) Become a climate champion! Get your community motivated and activated!
References
- ↑ CCA Coalition, n.d. Tropospheric Ozone
