No time to waste – CSE CEO on new IPCC report



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Center for Science and Environment (CSE) Executive Director Sunita Narain says there is no time to waste on the new report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC ).

“We can no longer waste time procrastinating or finding new excuses not to act, including empty promises of net zero by 2050,” Narain says.

The Director-General was reacting to the latest IPCC report which confirms that the world can no longer waste time procrastinating or finding new excuses not to act, including empty promises of net zero by 2050.

The climate change report is the first part of its sixth assessment report which sounds like a serious warning.

Narain listed some key points from the report. The first is that the world could be rushing towards a 1.5 ° C temperature rise by 2040.

The second is the main trigger of climate change which is, without a doubt, human activities; and the last point concerns the effectiveness of sinks in absorbing declining emissions.

No time to waste - CSE CEO on new IPCC report
Director General of the Center for Science and the Environment (CSE), Sunita Narain

The IPCC report states: “There is no longer a ‘maybe’. The threat of climate change is real; the dangers are imminent and the future is dire.

Narain therefore calls on the world to demand effective global leadership, adding that, the report coming from the normal conventional and conformist world of button-down scientists, should scare the world into action – real and meaningful.

“The question is whether we are listening. If action is taken on the scale and pace needed. This still does not happen.

According to her, the relative efficiency of sinks – the natural cleaning system of the land, oceans, forests and soils, will decline in the years to come as emissions continue to rise.

“Currently, the oceans, land and forests together absorb about 50 percent of the emissions released into the atmosphere each year. In other words, without these sinks, we would have already exceeded 1.5 ° C warming. “

Narain also observes that the countries’ “net zero” plans will have to be revisited.

As part of the net zero plan, countries like the United States and China have said their emissions will stay below what their terrestrial sinks or carbon capture technologies can clean up by 2050 and 2060 respectively. .

“But what this report also tells us is that we can’t ‘bank’ on sinks to clean up emissions in the future at the same rate,” Narain said.

The chief executive of the India-based organization says countries will need to redouble their efforts to plant more trees in order to sequester carbon dioxide, according to IPCC statement, this means sinks have reached their tipping point .

“Therefore, this report from global scientists must be a wake-up call. It is time for us to get serious and start meaningful action on the ground today. “

For Nurain, the good news, however, is that technologies are available to disrupt the current industrial system based on fossil fuels.

“We don’t have to wait for disruptive technologies. Instead, we need to be disruptive in action. The problem is that even today, action on the ground is too weak and too late.

Greenhouse gas emissions are expected to increase as countries affected by the Covid-19 pandemic rush to get back to normal.

Nurain says the world needs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45 to 50 percent from 2010 levels by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050.

“We need tough and drastic action. This is where scientists, being scientists, cannot articulate the most inconvenient of inconvenient truths. There is no doubt that the main contributors to climate change are a handful of countries – the United States and China together account for about half of the world’s annual emissions. “

According to her, from 1870 to 2019, the United States, the EU-27, Russia, the United Kingdom, Japan and China are responsible for 60% of the global budget for carbon dioxide emissions.

“If you even take the Paris targets, the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) of these countries, then in 2030 they will increase their share of the budget to 68%, not decrease it as needed and provide space for the rest of the world to grow up.

“This is because their targets are extremely low and disproportionate to the contribution to the problem and that China will increase its share of CO2 emissions – from 10 Gt / CO2 to 12 Gt / CO2 per year over the next decade, ”she said.

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