Time Is Running Out

Scientists say despite knowing enough about climate change, humankind is failing to turn the tide on climate change and the window of opportunity is fast closing. Carbon emissions are increasing but our willingness to do something about them is not, scientists say.  The need to raise global ambitions to cut carbon emissions and put the world on a cleaner, more sustainable path, has never been more urgent. It is clear that the world knows enough about climate change than it did over the last century ago, but actions taken to date are insufficient. 

Climate change projections point to increasing extreme weather, rising temperatures, droughts and floods. Seas and oceans are warming and reaching a saturation point to absorb increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Acting as a gigantic carbon sink, oceans take up about a third of the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by human activities. However, when absorbed by seawater, the greenhouse gas triggers chemical reactions, causing the ocean to acidify, scientists say. While on the one hand, the ocean’s CO2 uptake slows down global climate change on the other, this absorption affects the life and material cycles of the ocean and those who depend on it. The research indicates that ocean acidification, warming and other environmental condition are impairing ocean life and compromising ecosystems services provided by oceans. Ocean acidification reduces the ocean’s ability to store carbon and this threatens marine ecosystem that supports global fish stocks.

Are the impacts of climate change witnessed now motivation enough for our politicians to do something about it? Scientists worry that political ambitions are still weak.

Hans-Otto Portner, Co-Chair of the IPCC’s Working Group II and Head of research section in Ecosystems Physiology at the Alfred Wegener Institute expects the current round of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations to show to what extent extreme events have changed the mentality of policymakers.

“Climate change does not go away and its impacts will become more and more intensive so the pressure on policymakers to do something in the shorter term will be increasing,” Portner said. “It is really about those countries that are not much affected at the moment where there is this inertia and where maybe the awareness is large enough. Then you have individuals that do not follow the obvious insight from scientific information but rather follow their own beliefs. As a citizen, you can only hope that these individuals will lose influence over time.”

Portner said the European car industry has taken a long time in establishing alternative engines despite many years of talk about electric vehicles.  Portner said all countries need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions drastically in the middle of this century if Paris agreement targets are to be reached.

Portner blames the inertia on technological uncertainty. " Reducing CO2 emissions alone may not be sufficient,” Portner observed. “Net removal of CO2 from the atmosphere would have to contribute. This is already technically possible but the challenge is to develop and implement respective technologies at a larger scale.”

55 countries – accounting for 60 percent of global emission- have committed to peaking their emissions by 2030. However, more importantly, global emissions need to peak by 2020 to prevent dangerous warming levels.

This blog predicts that it will not be the advice from scientists that determine environmental policy but the projections on profitability from government accountants and economists.