The blockages focused on the output of fossil energies, finance, technology role or equity issues.
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How to curb the overheating of the planet and stop the damage and suffering that it inflicts, both to humans and nature? It is to this thorny question, eminently political, that the intergovernmental group of experts on the evolution of climate (IPCC) must be answered in a new report which should be published on Monday, April 4, at 5 pm
This opus constitutes the third and final part of its sixth evaluation report, detail the state of scientific knowledge on climate change. The first, published in August 2021, highlighted the unprecedented acceleration of warming. The second, at the end of February, has described its ever more devastating, generalized and often irreversible pests on the population and ecosystems. The third report details the range of solutions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
word to word
The approval of the report, which was to follow Friday 1 April, took a long time. Delegates agreed on a text on Sunday, April 3rd, late in the evening, but this one had to be yet formally approved, Monday morning. As with all IPCC reports, the “Summary for Policymakers”, a politically sensitive condensed of the scientific report of several thousand pages, has been negotiated, for two weeks, word a word, by the representatives of the 195 countries IPCC members, in collaboration with the authors who keep the last word. But the session has played the extensions, recording the longest delay since the creation of the IPCC, in 1988. The blockages focused on the release of fossil energies, finance, the role of technologies or equity issues, according to observers .
The 17 chapters of this third report should review the possible scenarios to curb the warming, declining the options by major sectors (energy, transport, industry, agriculture …) Not to mention the issues of social acceptability, of the Sobriety and place of technologies, such as capture and storage of CO 2 .
“No miracle cure”
“There is no miracle cure against the climate crisis, but there is a weapon of crime: fossil energies. There is no room for their expansion,” warns Nikki Reisch, Climate Director and energy from the Center for International Environmental Law, and one of the observers of the approval session.
NGOs call out emergency of coal, oil and gas and end their subsidies, but also to massively develop renewable energies, to transform agricultural and food systems or increase climate finance. “We already have all the solutions in hand, but we have to deploy them on a much larger scale, insists Stephen Cornelius, the WWF United Kingdom. We can still act, but the window is reduced very quickly.”
The world is not on the right trajectory. CO emissions 2 energy sector jumped 6% in 2021, to reach a historical record. They are expected to increase by 14% by 2030, compared to 2010 – if countries apply their climate plans – while it should be reduced by 45% to keep a chance not to exceed 1.5 ° C. warming. The promises of States are currently plants on the road to a warming of 2.7 ° C at the end of the century.