Code Red for Humanity and the Planet
Contributing Writers: Azad Ali, Tangerine Clarke,
Nelson King, Vinette K. Pryce, Bert Wilkinson
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Caribbean L 10 ife, AUGUST 13-19, 2021
OP-ED
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By Felix Dodds and Chris
Spence
NEW YORK, Aug. 11, 2021
(IPS) – UN Secretary General,
Antonio Guterres is absolutely
right to call the latest UN climate
report a “Code Red for
Humanity.” Without immediate
and serious action, we are condemning
future generations to
a dismal future.
Already, we have wasted too
much time. Next year, it will
be half a century since first UN
Conference on the Human Environment
in Stockholm warned
us of the risks to our environment
from human activities.
More than 30 years have passed
since the UN’s Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) issued its first report
(the latest report is its sixth).
Even that first report in 1990
warned of humanity’s impact
on greenhouse gas concentrations
and planetary warming.
Again, our actions over subsequent
decades have been woefully
inadequate.
This year has given us the
most vivid insights into what
the new world will look like,
whether it is droughts and fires
in California or the latest tragic
wildfires in Greece, as temperatures
get so hot that even a
small spark sets them off.
The IPCC report also looks at
heat waves. If we were to permit
a 2 °C increase in temperature,
then the record temperatures
recorded recently in the United
States and unexpectedly in
Canada would become 14 times
more likely to happen again
in future, both there and elsewhere.
There has already been an
increase in the number and the
strength of. Flooding is happening
more often and again
in places not expected as rain
falls in a different way to how
it did before These heavy downpours,
most recently in Germany,
show that the flood defenses
were built for a different type
of downpour and will required
huge infrastructural overhauls
if this is to be the new normal.
Then there is the cascading
effect if the forests and vegetation
have burnt down. When
the rain comes again there is
now nothing to hold the water
back, meaning floods will have
a greater impact on already devastated
communities.
The key here is water. The
UN’s climate negotiations only
added water as a key issue to
the negotiations in 2010 due
to campaigning by the multi
stakeholder efforts of the Water
and Climate Coalition. The
approach to greenhouse targets
missed a huge opportunity
to address the key sectors that
were either contributing to the
problem or would be impacted
by it.
No Minor Injuries
Why are so many political
leaders either in denial about
the need for urgent action, or
simply paying it lip service?
The current sense of denial is
unsettlingly reminiscent of the
comedy film Monty Python and
the Holy Grail. In one painfully
funny scene, a mysterious
dark knight bars the path of
our hero, King Arthur. The two
fight and King Arthur expects
the knight to stand aside when
he cuts off the knight’s arm.
But the knight refuses, claiming
at first that it is merely
a “scratch”. The fight resumes
and the knight loses his other
arm. Again, he refuses to submit
or step aside, claiming it is
“just a flesh wound.”
This is where we stand with
climate change. Already, we have
inflicted great injuries on our
planet and we need to respond
accordingly. We cannot pretend
the globe has just suffered a
few minor cuts and scrapes. If
our world was the dark knight,
you could argue that we have,
through our actions, already
severed a limb. We must cease
our attacks and treat this as a
global emergency for our global
health. No band aid solution or
plastering over the damage will
do. Inaction will not cut it.
In a health emergency, time
is of the essence. You cannot
wait to call an ambulance or try
to carry on as normal. If you
do, the patient may not survive.
The IPCC’s latest report shows
we must act immediately and
take the strongest action possible.
A Call to Action
So, what can be done with
the UN IPCC’s new warning?
First, those countries that
have not yet submitted new
Nationally Determined Contribution
targets under the UN’s
Paris agreement should do so
immediately.
Secondly, developed countries
should increase their contribution
promised in 2015 for
funding from $100 billion a year
for climate work to at least $200
billion by the Climate Summit
in Egypt in 2022.
Thirdly, and even more
importantly, governments need
to aggressively focus on the corporate
sector and its responsibilities.
This should include
making it a requirement for all
companies listed on any Stock
Exchange to have to produce
their sustainability strategy and
their Environmental, Social
and Governance Report (ESG)
every year. This should be a
requirement for remaining on
the stock exchange. This should
also require them to produce
science-based targets to achieve
net zero greenhouse gases by
2050. Companies’ voluntary,
self-created goals are no longer
sufficient.
Perhaps it is even worth considering
having Stock Exchanges
publish the total carbon of
their members and to start considering
them putting a cap on
what the Exchange would allow
and what their contribution to
net zero will be.
Fourthly, the role of local
and sub-national governments
needs to be supported and
enhanced. Actors at the local
and regional levels are critical
to delivering what we need.
They need to be supported to
set their own 2030 targets and
2050 net zero strategies. To
enable them to achieve this,
central governments will need
to support them and provide
the extra funding. All planning
decisions should be based on
the new projections of climate
change and building in flood
plains should stop.
Fifthly, governments should
review the impacts on climate
change of all existing policies
and not proceed unless they are
within the strategy to deliver
the NDC and the 2030 and 2050
Net Zero strategies. In short,
governments need to start
incorporating climate change
into all of their thinking across
all sectors. The problem is too
vast, and too urgent, to do otherwise.
Sixthly, all governments need
to urgently review their disaster
risk reduction strategies ahead
of a major UN conference on
this subject scheduled for next
May in Bali.
At all levels of government
we need to review the interlinkages
between water, agriculture,
energy and climate change to
ensure that planning is climate
proofed. Without accounting
for each of these sectors, the
solutions will not be big enough
to meet the challenge.
Finally, as voters, taxpayers
and citizens, we need to press
our political leaders to put climate
change at the top of their
list of priorities. They need to
be reminded that it is not just
future generations that will
judge them and their policies—
we can do so, too.
A Code Red
Emergency
We have a decade to turn this
around. Already, we have seen
global temperatures rise by 1.09
°C. The IPCC suggests we may
pass the all-important threshold
of 1.5 °C by 2034 to 2040.
In fact, things may be even
more pressing. The report that
came out on Monday was the
“summary for policymakers”,
which means it was a negotiated
document with both progressive
nations and more climate
sceptic and cautious countries
negotiating the exact wording.
While the findings were
certainly scientifically sound,
it is quite likely the language
could have been—and probably
should have been—even
more urgent. We would do well
to remember what some politicians
have said over the last few
years; if they have denied the
science in the past then now is
surely the time for them make
way for others who are willing
to give this issue the weight it
so clearly deserves.
Felix Dodds is an adjunct
professor at the Water Institute
at the University of North
Carolina where he is a Principal
Investigator for the Belmont
funded Re-Energize project. He
co-coordinated the Water and
Climate Change Coalition at
the Climate Negotiations (2007-
2012). His new book is Tomorrow’s
People and New Technology:
Changing How We Live
Our Lives (October 2021).
Chris Spence is an environmental
consultant, writer
and author of the book, Global
Warming: Personal Solutions
for a Healthy Planet. He is a
veteran of many climate summits
and other United Nations
negotiations over the past three
decades.
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