The United Nations’ latest climate report—via its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—may, in many ways, seem familiar. Described as a “final warning” from scientists, it states that we are currently off track to reach the Paris Agreement’s goal of keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees celsius compared to pre-industrial levels—with current action being “insufficient”. In fact, scientists have suggested that we may exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming as early as the 2030s, if we carry on as we are.
Of course, we’ve already had multiple warnings in recent years. In 2018, a landmark report from the IPCC suggested that we had only 12 years left—until 2030—to prevent irreversible damage. Another report, published in 2021, was described by UN secretary general António Guterres as a “code red for humanity.” Meanwhile, a follow-up report published in February 2022 concluded that some impacts of climate change were now already “irreversible.”
Despite its problems (including how U.S.-centric it is), Netflix’s Don’t Look Up*—*which sees Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence playing scientists warning of an extinction-causing comet hurtling towards Earth—provides an apt analogy for the way that scientists’ warnings have been repeatedly ignored. But rather than this happening over a six-month time frame, as in the film, we’ve known about human-caused climate change for decades.
Thirty-five years ago, NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen testified in the US Senate—declaring with “99 percent confidence” that greenhouse gas emissions were leading to global warming. “I would like to draw three main conclusions,” he said at the time. “Number one, the earth is warmer in 1988 than at any time in the history of instrumental measurements. Number two, global warming is now large enough that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause-and-effect relationship to the greenhouse effect. And number three, our computer climate simulations indicate that the greenhouse effect is already large enough to begin to affect the probability of extreme events such as summer heatwaves.”
Sadly, his warnings were—as we know—ignored. Fast forward to today, and the last eight years on Earth were the hottest on record. Meanwhile, the tangible effects of climate change are already being felt around the world. Just think of the devastating wildfires in Australia, the US, and southern Europe in recent years, or the deadly floods in Pakistan in 2022, which displaced a staggering eight million people, or the ongoing drought affecting the Horn of Africa, which has left millions struggling for food and water in Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya.
Despite this, we’re still in desperate need of real leadership on climate change. Instead of being drastically reduced, global CO2 emissions actually reached a record high in 2022. In the U.S., President Joe Biden has just approved the Willow project in Alaska, one of the country’s largest ever oil drilling projects on federal land—which could produce up to 180,000 barrels of oil a day.
While all of this may seem incredibly bleak, scientists say we have the solutions needed—most importantly, kicking our addiction to fossil fuels—to reach peak emissions by 2025, and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2030. “If we act now, we can still secure a liveable, sustainable future for all,” explains Hoesung Lee, chair of the IPCC.
The message could not be clearer. We’ve now had all the warnings, and we’ve got the solutions. The question still remains, though: what will it take for real action on climate change to take place?