From pledges to action – avoiding climate catastrophe at COP27

From pledges to action –

avoiding climate catastrophe at COP27

Over recent months we have all witnessed the increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events as climate breakdown becomes impossible to ignore. As we approach the next round of UN climate talks, Paul Allen looks at the urgent need for joined-up solutions.

This summer, the UK and other parts of Europe have experienced temperatures above 40°C, leading to breakdowns in transport systems and water supply shortages. The Met Office estimates that climate change has resulted in such extreme heatwaves being ten times more likely than they would otherwise have been. And they are not just hotter, they’re also longer lasting, with warm spells more than doubling in length in the past 50 years.

Parched ground and dry vegetation caused by longer hotter periods results in an increased likelihood and faster spread of forest fires. Due to its more northerly location, the UK has so far avoided some of the worst wildfire impacts experienced in Europe, but severe fires have occurred in Spain, Portugal, France, Greece, Croatia and Albania – with thousands forced to move and hundreds of deaths.

In other parts of the world things are even worse. China is reeling from devastation from a wave of extreme weather emergencies. During this year’s rainy season, heavy rainstorms have brought severe flooding and landslides to large areas of southern China, displacing millions of people and causing huge economic losses. The coastal Fujian province saw record-breaking extreme rainfall in June, whilst a prolonged summer heatwave saw temperatures of over 40°C, and around 65% of China’s population living under a heat warning.

These extreme weather impacts are now recognised as a direct consequence of the current 1.1°C warming of the planet above pre-industrial levels. What is really worrying is that they are occurring more frequently and more intensely than most climate models predicted.

Feedbacks and interlinking crises

In recent years, we’ve seen an increased understanding and recognition of the impacts and threats of climate feedbacks (the effects of global temperature rise that lead to further warming). Former UK Chief Scientific Advisor Sir David King makes the risks clear in a recent report from the Climate Crisis Advisory Group, ‘A critical pathway for a manageable future for humanity’:

Melting sea-ice transforms ocean surfaces from reflective to absorbing states - as ocean heating speeds up, ice melts more rapidly.

“As permafrost thaws, explosive releases of methane happen in the Arctic. These explosions increase GHG [greenhouse gas] concentrations, speeding up heating and thawing processes. Similarly, melting sea-ice transforms ocean surfaces from reflective to absorbing states. Ocean heating speeds up, and ice melts more rapidly. Such feedback loops accelerate progress towards tipping points: the chance of slowing or stopping changes slips away.”

At the same time as the world wakes up to the urgency of the climate crisis, the impact of rising energy prices on households is ongoing and severe, helping drive a wider cost-of-living crisis leading to serious financial hardship for many, with some research suggesting that more than half of UK households will be in fuel poverty by January next year.

Over the last year, an unprecedented increase in wholesale gas prices has caused significant rises in energy retail prices. The way the UK energy market works means that rising wholesale fossil fuel prices force up the retail price of all energy supplies, despite falling costs for renewable energy generation. Many of the innovative new energy suppliers have gone bust, whilst large fossil fuel corporations are recording record profits.

With rising fossil fuel prices, uncertain supply chains and the rapid fall in renewable generation costs, there is a clear crossover between climate, energy cost and energy security solutions. As well as investing in renewable energy, improving energy efficiency must be a key part of any strategy to reduce UK energy demand and lower energy bills – a home insulation programme is a key missing policy that would provide many co-benefits.

There is an urgent need to link things up, to maximise the co-benefits of our actions and build a wider and more diverse coalition to help accelerate a just transition to a safer, fairer, healthier future for us all.

From Glasgow to Sharm el-Sheikh – towards COP27

As we move on from last November’s COP26 UN climate summit in Glasgow, we face a serious gap between the agreed national level commitments and the scale of emissions reduction required to give us a chance to avoid irreversible global climate breakdown.

According to research by Climate Action Tracker, the current combined global emissions reduction targets for 2030 have the world heading towards warming of 2.4°C by the end of the century, whilst current policies and actions have us on track for 2.7°C – far from the 1.5°C target enshrined in the Paris Agreement.

In light of the growing evidence of the need for urgent and ambitious action, governments across the globe need to move beyond tweaking business-as-usual and embrace an emergency mode, so nations can come to COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt this November with radically increased commitments and the plans to deliver them. Governments must show how they will halve emissions by 2030, with clear commitments to immediate emissions reductions across all sectors.

At the same time, governments need to respond to the worsening impacts of climate change, with national adaptation plans and a delivery plan for providing finance to developing countries to support mitigation and adaptation and to cover loss and damage from climate impacts.

Making change happen

We have the power to make change happen, but to unleash that power there needs to be a new unity of purpose and a belief in our own ability to act. We all must recognise that we are part of an increasingly diverse movement focusing on action, with millions of people from across the globe sharing experiences, knowledge, data and ideas for what we need to do next.

Rather than becoming overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the challenge, councils, businesses, local groups and even individual households can look at where they have influence to make change happen. It can be helpful to think about this in terms of four directions: downwards, making the changes which are within our control; sharing knowledge and working sideways with others; lobbying upwards for necessary policies and resources; and inwards by gaining the skills and knowledge needed to make change happen.

For a family, this might mean looking at where they can act on their household emissions (downwards), talking to neighbours and providing support for others in their community to take action (sideways), lobbying politicians or businesses to do more (upwards), and building skills and knowledge so that they can take more effective action in future (inwards).

As we approach COP27, and the need to move from pledges to implementation becomes ever more urgent, ensuring that everyone has the knowledge and skills to take effective action is a pressing priority. Of course, we need climate-informed activists, scientists and policymakers, in fact we need many more of them. But we also need climate-focused farmers, mechanics, teachers, nurses, lawyers, retailers and chefs.

Here at CAT, our courses, training, workshops and events bring people together in-person and online to explore solutions, providing skills, knowledge, understanding and networks to become part of the transformational change that we so urgently need. By working together in our homes, communities, workplaces and as active citizens pushing for change, we still have a chance to pull the world back from the brink of climate catastrophe and build a better future for all. CS

References available on request.

About the author

Paul is CAT’s Zero Carbon Britain Knowledge and Outreach Coordinator. He has been involved with our research into zero carbon scenarios since the beginning, coordinating the development of research reports and liaising directly with government, industry, NGOs and the arts to share findings.