IPCC report’s verdict on climate crimes of
humanity: guilty as hell
Analysis: report exposes the failure to act on the
climate crisis – political leaders are now in the dock
Humans have caused ‘unprecedented’ and ‘irreversible’
change to climate, scientists warn
Climate crisis ‘unequivocally’ caused by human
activities, says IPCC report
Damian
Carrington Environment editor
@dpcarrington
Mon 9 Aug
2021 09.00 BST
As a
verdict on the climate crimes of humanity, the new Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change report could not be clearer: guilty as hell.
The
repeatedly ignored warnings of scientists over past decades have now become
reality. Humanity, through its actions, or lack of action, has unequivocally
overheated the planet. Nowhere on Earth is escaping rising temperatures, worse
floods, hotter wildfires or more searing droughts.
The future
looks worse. “If we do not halt our emissions soon, our future climate could
well become some kind of hell on Earth,” says Prof Tim Palmer at the University
of Oxford.
This would
be the sentence for these climate crimes, but it has yet to be passed down. The
world can avoid the harshest punishment, but only just. Immediate repentance
for the delays that have brought the world to the brink is required in the form
of immediate and deep emissions cuts.
The key
aspect of the IPCC report is that the 42-page summary is agreed, line by line,
by every government on the planet, with the scientists vetoing any politically
convenient but unscientific proposal.
As a
result, governments that continue to fail to take action have nowhere left to
hide – the crystal-clear report has bust all of their alibis. “Too many
‘net-zero’ climate plans have been used to greenwash pollution and business as
usual,” says Teresa Anderson at ActionAid International.
The report
exposes such plans with its stark statement that immediate action is the only
way to avoid ever-worsening impacts, of which today’s wildfires in California,
Greece and Turkey, floods in Germany, China and England, and heatwaves in
Canada and Siberia are merely a foretaste. As Greta Thunberg says, the climate
crisis must be treated as a crisis.
The action
required is well known and the IPCC report must be the spur for it to be taken,
says António Guterres, the UN secretary general: “This report must sound a
death knell for coal and fossil fuels, before they destroy our planet. If we
combine forces now, we can avert climate catastrophe. But, as the report makes
clear, there is no time for delay and no room for excuses.”
Every
choice made now matters. Helen Clarkson, the CEO of the Climate Group, which
represents 220 regional governments and 300 multinational businesses, covering
1.75 billion people and 50% of the global economy, says: “Every decision, every
investment, every target, needs to have the climate at its core.”
The gravity
of the situation laid out in the report blows away blustering over the supposed
costs of climate action. In any case, not acting will cost far more. “It’s
suicidal, and economically irrational to keep procrastinating,” says Prof
Saleemul Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and
Development at the Independent University, Bangladesh.
For those
governments and businesses that still chose inaction, the IPCC report may well
end up being used as key evidence against them in real courtrooms. “We’ll be
taking this report with us to the courts,” says Kaisa Kosonen at Greenpeace.
“By
strengthening the scientific evidence between human emissions and extreme
weather the IPCC has provided new, powerful means to hold the fossil fuel
industry and governments directly responsible for the climate emergency,” she
says. “One only needs to look at our recent court victory against Shell to
realise how powerful IPCC science can be.”
Hope
remains, just. Christiana Figueres, who was UN climate chief when the Paris
deal was sealed in 2015, says: “Everything we need to avoid the exponential
impacts of climate change is doable. But it depends on solutions moving
exponentially faster than impacts.”
The IPCC’s
report means all the evidence that will ever be needed is now in place. “The
continued dithering to address climate change is no longer about the lack of
scientific evidence, but directly tied to a lack of political will,” says
Kristina Dahl of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
That means political
leaders are now in the dock and the vital UN Cop26 summit in Glasgow in
November may be the last hearing at which they can avoid the judgment of
history.
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