Remind us that our planet is dying under the influence of human-driven climate change, and it is hard to avoid this month.The catastrophic flood has Killed 160 people in Germany And after more than 50 people died Large-scale flood Last week, Henan Province in central China dropped a year’s rainfall in three days. At the same time, forest fires swept through one of the coldest places in the world, SiberiaAfter unusually hot and dry weather swept the area. Canada and the United States were also affected by the fire, which destroyed communities and large tracts of woodland.A big fire Oregon, U.S. The area of sprawl is 25 times that of Manhattan, and it has been out of control for several weeks. Global warming caused by rising levels of greenhouse gases is implicated in every case.
Things will not get better. In fact, they will only get worse. Every year, factories, power plants and vehicles emit tens of billions of tons of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere, capturing solar radiation, which will further increase global temperature. Even if we stop all greenhouse gas emissions tomorrow, the carbon dioxide that already exists in our atmosphere will still exist for decades and continue to heat the earth, turning vegetation into fire, allowing the air to retain more moisture before it is released, causing sudden and devastating consequences.
It’s not that humans can quit their dependence on fossil fuels overnight. At best, we may achieve this goal in 2050, the date set by world leaders to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions. In other words, we will experience increasingly severe and destructive weather events in the next 30 years. Floods, wildfires and storms, as well as shrinking ice sheets, rising sea levels, coral reef bleaching and desert spreading, will become the norm. This is the best result we can expect in the next three years.
Scientists say the problem is that to prevent the deterioration of weather patterns by 2050, the global temperature rise must be limited to Around 1.5C Once upon a time in the industrial age. However, since then, the world has warmed by 1.2 degrees Celsius due to the greenhouse gases we emit into the atmosphere, and the prospect of further limiting the temperature to a few tenths of a degree in the next 30 years looks far away. In fact, estimates based on countries’ current emission reduction commitments indicate that by the middle of this century, temperatures may be more than 2 degrees Celsius higher than pre-industrial levels.
In such a future, more than a quarter of the world’s population may experience extreme drought for at least one month each year; rain forests will face extinction; melting ice caps will cause dangerous sea level rise and cause major changes in sea level Ocean current behavior For example, the Gulf Stream. In addition, the loss of polar reflection ice will cause the ocean to absorb more solar radiation, while the melting of permafrost in Siberia and other regions will release methane plumes, another greenhouse gas. Inevitably, the temperature will soar further.
The reason for this dire prospect is that for decades, politicians and business leaders have failed to recognize the risks involved in large-scale disturbance of the composition of our atmosphere, nor have they taken steps to limit the damage. As a result, the world is facing a climate catastrophe and has little time to take action to deal with the threat.We are now less than 100 days away from the UN meeting COP26 Climate Change Conference At the opening in Glasgow, world leaders will have the last clear opportunity to limit climate chaos.
The outlook does not look encouraging, and the Ministers of Energy and Environment in Naples on Friday have made this very clear. G20 Groups of rich countries, which account for 85% of annual emissions, cannot agree on a package of commitments to combat climate change. The G20 meeting is seen as a crucial stage before Cop26, and its failure to find common ground shows how difficult it will be to reach a meaningful agreement in Scotland. One of the main points of contention last week was that India and China refused to agree to the early phase-out of coal power, which is one of the most environmentally damaging industrial processes on the planet.
What’s more worrying is that rich countries and developing countries have differences on how to share the bills that must be paid in response to global warming. The latter should receive at least US$100 billion annually from public and private sources in wealthy countries to help them avoid the most severe damage from extreme weather caused by the burning of oil, gas, and coal in developed countries in the past two centuries on their path to industrial power. . This was one of the cornerstones of international climate negotiations before the 2015 Paris Agreement, which promised the world to work hard to control global warming below 1.5C. However, rich countries have failed to deliver on these promises. This disagreement bodes badly for Cop26 in November.
The next opportunity for politicians will be held in October, when the G20 heads of state and leaders plan to meet and hope to ensure that the final preparations for Cop26 are back on track. Otherwise, the prospect of the summit’s success is worrying. Saving the world is about to begin, and it happened.
