IMAGE: Rilson S. Avelar — Pixabay
The climate emergency is undoubtedly the greatest problem we face. Some uninformed people may play it down or pretend it doesn’t exist, but this is an unparalleled disaster: humanity has modified our planet to the point of making it uninhabitable, and this despite being a species that, like a mold on the surface of an orange, colonizes a very small layer of it.
While the problem remains crucial, there are glimmers of hope that after many years of procrastination, we might just be starting to act collectively with a minimum of common sense for the future. Our margin for evasion is decreasing with each passing minute, but the latest emissions data suggests we’re on the way to being able to solve the problem.
After the hiatus caused by the pandemic, which is a tiny blip in an evolution that has doubled our emissions in the last 40 years, last year they were the highest ever. But many countries have begun to curb them or at least stabilize them, and everything points to a peak around 2025 and a decline thereafter. The United States reached this peak in 2005 and has declined by 10% since then, while Russia, Japan and, particularly, the European Union (following the Russian invasion of Ukraine) have also managed to halt their growth.
Due to their growth, China and India continue to increase their emissions sharply, but they have committed to achieving neutrality around 2050. Belatedly, but possibly achievable if other countries manage to compensate with their reductions. In fact, China is clearly increasing its efforts to develop renewable energies to the point of quadrupling its installed capacity over the last decade to become the world’s largest market for electric vehicles, which encourages us to think about a change of approach.
At the same time, economic growth is becoming less dependent on fossil fuels, which marks the true extent of the technological transition: despite the doomsayers, electrification based on renewable generation makes growth possible without increasing our emissions. Many developed countries are now achieving this growth without further emissions, and the challenge is to get other countries with lower rates of development to do the same.
Does this mean that we can relax and forget about the climate emergency? Absolutely not. The very term, which some people try to avoid with more “neutral” terms such as global warming or climate change, makes it clear: we are still facing an emergency in every sense, and emergencies require exceptional measures and change rather than business as usual. If anyone thinks that forgetting a threat as great as the one we are facing can be done without changes and sacrifices, they are mistaken.
The reality is that we have to continue to reduce emissions, and it has to be done faster if we are to avoid disaster on a greater scale than the floods, fires or hurricanes that now take place. Sadly we have now accepted that these are now unavoidable, although they tend to affect countries with historically low emissions and that are least prepared to deal with them.
In practice, the goal set out in the Paris Agreement of keeping the global temperature rise below 1.5ºC is still achievable, but it is becoming increasingly difficult due to the slowness with which we are reaching the targets. And that 1.5°C does not guarantee anything: we could very well remain in a new equilibrium with a much higher number of natural catastrophes, or even evolve to unimaginable situations if the concentration of carbon dioxide in the oceans, or the evolution of ecosystems such as the tundras or the poles continues to change for the worse. But if we are not able to contain this increase and it ends up being above 1.5°C, the consequences could be much worse, and completely unknown.
Conclusions? Few things are more important now than the energy transition and decarbonization, and it is worth doing everything in our power to make them happen as quickly as possible. No selfish considerations, no short-termism, because we simply no longer have those degrees of freedom. Let’s not be confused by the proximity of the goal: we are still in an emergency, even if most of us pretend we aren’t. We must continue to evolve.
(En español, aquí)
