Climate experts examine solutions, after warning of catastrophe

How to stop climate change, which is affecting all of humanity? Nearly 200 states are examining as of Monday the range of solutions to reduce emissions, in a context of war in Ukraine that illustrates the dependence on fossil fuels.

UN climate experts (IPCC) once again warned of the consequences of global warming in a report published more than three weeks ago, in which they warned that about half of the planet’s inhabitants are already “very vulnerable” to the phenomenon.

The new chapter of this vast report, that of the proposals, must be completed between now and April 4.

“Taken as a whole, the message is that the science is clear, that the impacts are costly and growing but that we still have a chance of avoiding the worst if we act now,” Alden Meyer, an analyst at the E3G think tank, told AFP.

“This report will tell us what we need if we are serious about it,” he added.

The first chapter, published in August 2021, laid bare the acceleration of warming. The threshold of +1.5ºC compared to the pre-industrial era -the most ambitious objective of the Paris Agreement- could be crossed by 2030.

The second chapter was the one that pessimistically detailed the consequences for human beings.

Starting Monday, and over two weeks of debates around thousands of pages, experts will review all possible scenarios to stop the phenomenon, divided into large sectors (energy, industry, agriculture) without forgetting the degree of social acceptability and the role of technologies to absorb and store carbon.

“Many things have changed” since the last evaluation cycle of the IPCC, Taryn Fransen, of the World Resources Institute, explains to AFP.

The historic Paris Agreement was signed in 2015, and scientists, encouraged by the media and non-governmental organizations, have repeatedly pointed to the most extreme weather events, from droughts to floods.

Although “we have known what we have to do, for a long time”, achieving the objectives of the Paris Agreement does not mean traveling “a single path”, explains Taryn Fransen.

The report “will present various paths, and then it will be up to our leaders to take it seriously” depending on their national contexts, he adds.

The signatories of the Paris Agreement pledged in particular to speed up their decoupling from fossil fuels at the latest UN international meeting (COP26).

The proposals contained in the IPCC report will also be “important information in the debate in Europe and the United States about the exit of Russian oil and gas”, points out Alden Meyer, who hopes that “in the long term” the war in Ukraine will “give more impetus” to the collective decision to abandon gas and oil.

The invasion of Ukraine broke into the debates of the month of February within the IPCC.

The plenary was marked by an inflamed statement by the head of the Ukrainian delegation.

“Man-made climate change and the war in Ukraine have the same roots: fossil fuels and our dependence on them,” Svitlana Krakovska was quoted as saying by sources at the meeting.

The debate about measures to combat global warming risks heating up even more in the next two weeks, given the unstoppable rise in the price of a barrel of oil and the threat to gas supplies in Europe.

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