Climate Connection: United Nations Report

United Nations Report

This month, the United Nations Environmental Program reported that world governments had failed in their 2015 Paris commitments to keep average global temperature from rising more than 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial temperatures. We have continued to burn fossil fuels emitting CO2 and methane that trap the sun’s heat. Higher temperature is now inevitable, with devastating consequences of sea level rise, severe weather, water and food insecurity, and extinction of species.

We are entering an unprecedented time of temperature overshoot, requiring us to approach the 1.5-degree target from above. Decline from a peak will take decades to centuries of environmental catastrophes, depending on how quickly we now act to reverse course to control global temperature, how hot it gets, and the duration that we exceed 1.5. Every tenth of a degree and every climate action is critical. In addition to eliminating fossil fuel energy production, we have to transform agriculture and landfill systems that generate methane. The changes in earth systems are not all reversible. Success in reversing temperature increases above 1.5 is not guaranteed. We can never return to the world that we took for granted.

How to try to turn what we humans have done around? The UN report is clear. It will take transformational change in governments. To achieve a continuing just response to the climate emergency will require governments to engage the populace in profound changes in finance, diet, consumption, science, community, and international cooperation. Wealthy countries that are most responsible for greenhouse gas emissions need to assist more vulnerable countries in resources and technology transfer to cope with what is already impacting them from rising oceans, torrential storms, drought, and heat. The International Court of Justice and International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea have declared the legal obligations for these changes.

Of all countries in the world, the United States has emitted the greatest portion of greenhouse gases in its past, and is the second largest emitter currently after China. China has embraced the climate emergency more than any other country, is effectively transforming its power generation to renewable sources, and is exporting its green technology widely. The U.S. government has been captured by the fossil fuel industry and increasingly by agribusiness and technocracy. It denies climate change as a hoax and is destroying our scientific leadership in climate science and health. It fosters war internationally and divisiveness nationally. It undermines the UN which is a unique asset for the commitment of all governments to embrace the challenges of temperature overshoot, peak, decline, and climate stabilization in new circumstances for humanity. Without transformational change of our government, other governments are diverted from their own essential transformations. Our current 2-party political system does not appear to yet have the political will to accomplish what is now necessary. Our votes and political advocacy in coming municipal, state, and federal elections are only a beginning. 

–– Kay Kreiss, Transition Sitka