Our planet and its inhabitants have endured a grim time over the past 10 months. According to climate scientists’ latest figures, 2023 will almost certainly prove to have been the hottest year ever recorded. Global temperatures are destined to reach 1.43C above those experienced before the Industrial Revolution. The consequences have been striking. Glaciers are disappearing, ice caps melting and deserts spreading at an accelerating rate. On top of these climatic blights, intense rainfall, droughts and wildfires are happening more frequently and violently than have ever been experienced, with disturbing consequences.
Around 2 billion people, almost a quarter of the world’s population, endured at least five consecutive days of extreme heat in 2023, an unprecedented level of meteorological misery that claimed thousands of lives. And forecasters say there is more to come. Next year, temperatures are likely to rise even further thanks to El Niño, a periodic appearance of sea-surface warming in the Pacific, which heats the atmosphere across the planet.
The world is burning, an observation that should generate ringing calls for action at the forthcoming Cop28 climate change conference, which begins this month in the United Arab Emirates. This is virtually the last chance humanity has to mend its ways and for delegates to agree how to bring an end to our addiction to fossil fuels. As activists point out, coal, gas and oil combustion is still filling the atmosphere with emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, in particular carbon dioxide, and these are spawning global mayhem.
Sadly, omens for such a change of heart look poor. The world has fallen so far behind in its attempts to tackle global warming, and to mend its gas-guzzling ways, that only the deepest, most comprehensive programme of measures can keep global heating below 1.5C, a point that will be underlined starkly at Cop28.
Limiting global warming to 1.5C was first agreed at the Paris climate meeting in 2015 as a target which, if achieved, would curtail the worst impacts of global warming. Crucially, it was also decided by delegates in Paris to set up a regular global stocktake of the effectiveness of the actions that would be taken across the planet and to analyse their likely effectiveness.
Results of the first of these stocktakes will be presented at Cop28, and they will make for disturbing reading – for they will show that humanity is wildly off course in its attempts to limit global warming to that 1.5C target. Indeed, it is likely to be belching out about 22bn tonnes more carbon dioxide in 2030 than the maximum level needed to keep global temperatures below that 1.5C limit. In other words, to reach our climate aspirations we must find a last-minute way to eradicate 22bn tonnes – the equivalent of the combined emissions of the world’s worst five carbon polluters: China, US, India, Russia and Japan – from the emissions of cars, transport and factories within the next few years. There is not so much a gap between reality and our climate aspirations as a near unbridgeable gulf.
The sad truth is that virtually every nation on Earth has turned its back on an impending calamity that will displace billions and kill thousands, if not millions, and has instead focused attention on local problems. A perfect example of this national shortsightedness is provided by the United Kingdom.
Britain was once an influential player at Cop conferences but has since seen its authority decline precipitously – first through Brexit, which meant we no longer led EU delegations, and later through our backtracking on development assistance pledges for developing countries. Worse has followed.
In the last year, prime minister Rishi Sunak has revealed himself as a national leader who is happy to sacrifice past Conservative party pledges to protect the environment and instead agree policies that will encourage further oil and gas exploration in the North Sea. In addition, it has now emerged that the government has received no new applications to build onshore wind farms in England since cabinet ministers eased planning rules earlier this year. Offshore wind farms, a technology once dominated by the UK, have suffered a similar fate. These are clear signs that Sunak’s anti-green stance is driving investment abroad. Worse, it is damaging our prospects of playing our part in saving the planet.
In fact, the UK appears to be signalling that it is possible to assert it is a climate leader while actually doing less and less about it. At Cop28, there will be pressure from many delegates to agree to phase down or phase out the use of all fossil fuels. Sadly, it is now possible the UK may align itself with countries like Saudi Arabia in trying to water down or kill such a pledge.
Sunak’s stance shows how far his party has travelled, a point stressed yesterday by former Tory energy minister Chris Skidmore, who has warned that the Conservatives are heading “in a dark direction” over climate issues. Sadly, his stance is looking increasingly isolated. It may take another year, with the return of a Labour government, before Britain can again play its proper role in the fight against climate change. By then it may be too late.
