A Nasa satellite photo showing the extent of sea ice in the Arctic. The latest IPCC climate change report says unprecedented action is needed to keep global temperature rises to 1.5C. Photograph: HO/AFP/Getty Images
A Nasa satellite photo showing the extent of sea ice in the Arctic. The latest IPCC climate change report says unprecedented action is needed to keep global temperature rises to 1.5C. Photograph: HO/AFP/Getty Images
The authors of the landmark report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said urgent and unprecedented changes are needed to reach the target, which is affordable and feasible although it lies at the most ambitious end of the Paris agreement pledge to keep temperatures between 1.5C and 2C.
Debra Roberts, a co-chair of the IPCC working group, said: “It’s a line in the sand and what it says to our species is that this is the moment and we must act now. This is the largest clarion bell from the science community and I hope it mobilises people and dents the mood of complacency.”
Julie Hirigoyen, chief executive at UK Green Building Council (UKGBC), said:
This report from the IPCC is a wake-up call for governments and businesses across the globe. One of the goals of the international 2015 COP21 climate deal was to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, recognising that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change. This latest IPCC report points to the urgency and scale of action required to achieve this, which should be keenly reviewed by every single boardroom. There is no doubt that business leaders need to make bold decisions today to transition to a low/no-carbon economy that can sustain future generations.
The construction and property industry in the UK is an economic juggernaut, and our buildings account for approximately 30% of carbon emissions. It is also the industry with the most cost-effective means of reducing carbon emissions so it will be a vital catalyst for change in the wider economy. At UKGBC we know that built environment businesses can, and must, lead the charge against climate change. Our Advancing Net Zero programme is a collaborative initiative to drive the transition to a net zero carbon built environment by 2050 – which would be commensurate with the 1.5°C limit. Only by all working together to effect change at speed and at scale will we stand any chance of rising to the challenge outlined today.
According to my colleague Jon Watts, the big question now is whether governments will act on the report or ignore it:
In Britain, the next step will be a meeting in parliament to discuss how to move towards net zero emissions. It will be chaired by Lord Krebs, former member of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), and speakers will include Prof Jim Skea, who was co-chair of an IPCC working group, and Baroness Brown. The government to expected to formally ask the CCC for advice around 15 October.
Gebru Jember Endalew, the chair of the Least Developed Countries Group, one of the key negotiating blocks in climate talks representing the world’s poorest countries, said:
Communities across the world are already experiencing the devastating impacts of 1C global warming. Each fraction of a degree that global temperatures rise is extremely dangerous.
Limiting global temperature increases to 1.5C means significantly decreased levels of food insecurity, water shortages, destruction of infrastructure, and displacement from sea level rise and other impacts. To the lives and livelihoods of billions, that half a degree is everything.
Endalew said the report made clear that there is an urgent need to “accelerate the global response to climate change to avoid exceeding the 1.5C limit”, adding:
Governments must increase climate action now and submit more ambitious plans for the future. This includes increasing the level of support to developing countries to enable them to develop and lift their people out of poverty without going down a traditional, unsustainable development pathway.
On the issue of loss and damage, Endalew said:
This IPCC report confirms that loss and damage resulting from climate change will only worsen with further warming with much greater losses at 2C than at 1.5C. It is particularly vulnerable countries like the least developed countries that are worst affected by the devastating impacts of climate change and bear the greatest cost from the damage it causes, despite contributing the least to the problem. This injustice must be addressed by the international community through the provision of support for dealing with loss and damage.
The most important message of this IPCC report is that achieving 1.5C is necessary, achievable and urgent. A safer, more prosperous future is possible with immediate action to implement transformative change across societies. There is a need to take advantage of the increasing availability of affordable, renewable and efficient energy solutions, rapidly reduce the use of fossil fuels, with coal phased out by mid-century, preserve and restore forests and soils, promote sustainable agriculture and implement other real climate solutions that together can bring about a zero-carbon economy.
On the implementation guidelines for the Paris agreement that are due at COP24 in December 2018, he said:
The IPCC report has made even clearer the need for the Paris rulebook to properly reflect the breadth of action required by all countries to achieve the agreement’s 1.5C goal. Countries must deliver a robust rulebook that will ensure adequate action is taken to cut emissions, adapt to climate change and address loss and damage, and that support is provided to enable poorer countries to do the same.
Dr Jo House, reader in environmental science and policy at the Cabot Institute, University of Bristol, said today’s report underlines the need “to rapidly replace fossil fuel emissions with low-cost renewable energy technologies that are already widely available”.
She added:
The report also highlights the urgent needs to protect forests and peatlands – these store more carbon than fossil fuel reserves, but also suck it out of the atmosphere, removing nearly a third of our current carbon dioxide emissions. Planting new forests can remove carbon from the atmosphere, as can using plants’ biomass for energy with carbon capture and storage technology. Some scenarios rely on planting up to 700Mha of land to bioenergy crops – that’s twice the size of India. To avoid relying on land for bioenergy mitigation, competing with food and nature, we have to address fossil fuel and industrial emissions. The IPCC will produce a special report on climate change and land next year to look further into land based mitigation and the co-benefits and tradeoffs.
He says although individual choices about how we live are important, it is only by coming together and forcing through real systemic change (100% renewable towns and cities, keeping carbon in the ground and divestment from fossil fuels) that climate breakdown can be avoided.
There is no shortage of political opposition to meaningful climate action, from the US president, Donald Trump, to Brazil’s far-right populist Jair Bolsonaro. And this morning Australia’s prime minister, Scott Morrison, has put himself firmly in that category.
Speaking before the IPCC report was released he said there was no money for “global climate conferences and all that nonsense”.
George Monbiot has written a powerful thread about the threat we face and what needs to be done:
1. Because the lobbying power of fossil fuel-based businesses outweighs that of any other faction. The fossil fuel industry uses its profits to lobby for continued extraction and use. Its tactics are highly sophisticated.
3. This campaign of denial resonates with an innate resistance to change, reinforced by a tendency known as System Justification: a fundamental human weakness.
5. Perpetual growth was impossible until coal was widely used: before then, industrial expansion led to agricultural depression, breaking the cycle of accumulation (see EA Wrigley, Energy and the English Industrial Revoliution). So we came to see progress = growth = fossil fuel
7. This shift will not occur through buying different products or reducing the use of plastic bags, or any other form of voluntary consumer action, valid as these may be. It will occur only through political action.
8. What does this mean? Mobilisation on a massive scale, through groups such as https://t.co/iQUIxrOaMa, to put environmental breakdown at the front and centre of political life. We need to break through vested interests, denial and System Justification to force government action
10. We need to get embarassing about it, to overcome our own reticence, even when we are labelled Jeremiahs or Cassandras, and risk upsetting people in alerting them to what is happening and what we need to do. https://t.co/eqXaLi7JQY
Caroline Lucas, MP for and former leader of the Green party, said:
This report couldn’t be written in stronger terms: we are at a tipping point on the edge of complete climate breakdown, and governments around the world are failing to prevent it.
Our own government is pushing us towards that tipping point with carbon intensive and ecologically destructive projects like airport expansion, fracking and HS2 – while slashing support for renewables and continuing to subsidise fossil fuels.
Ministers have a choice: they can keep coating business-as-usual policies in a green veneer and watch as floods and heatwaves become the norm. Or they can embrace the opportunities to create a fairer, healthier, safer society that come with the economic overhaul we need.
It is worth revisiting this piece from last week by my colleague George Monbiot, who argues that unless we kick our addiction to economic growth we can not meet the challenge posed by the unfolding climate breakdown.
Given that economic growth, in nations that are already rich enough to meet the needs of all, requires an increase in pointless consumption, it is hard to see how it can ever be decoupled from the assault on the living planet.
The Aldersgate Group, which represents some of the of the UK’s leading businesses, said the report sets out clear opportunities for a zero-carbon economy.
Nick Molho, executive director, said:
This report from the world’s leading climate scientists is clear that there are compelling environmental, economic and social benefits to limiting the increase in global temperatures to 1.5C as envisaged in the Paris agreement. Whilst achieving such a target will require challenging emission cuts across the economy, important progress has already been made and an increase in ambition would unlock a significant innovation and investment opportunity.
He added:
With strengths in areas such as offshore wind and electric vehicle manufacturing, energy efficient building design and green financial and legal services, UK businesses have a strong basis from which to accelerate emission cuts and be at the forefront of the development of the new clean technologies and services which the world economy will increasingly demand.
Major economies now need to increase their existing emissions reduction pledges under the Paris agreement and adopt net zero-emissions targets in line with the conclusions of the IPCC report. The prime minister made the right call when she announced at the UN general assembly that the UK will be joining the Carbon Neutrality Coalition, especially as this follows growing public backing and cross-party support for a net zero target.
The government must now begin work towards legislating for such a target in the UK, by rapidly acting on its commitment to seek the Committee on Climate Change’s advice on how the UK can ensure its climate targets are aligned with the 1.5C goal. Backed by detailed policies, such a target would accelerate investment in ultra-low-emission goods, services and infrastructure and support the innovation needed to tackle emission cuts in more challenging sectors such as land management, agriculture, long-distance transport and heavy industry.
Claire Perry, minister for energy, has put out a brief statement.
This report should act as a rallying cry for governments around the world to innovate, invest, and raise ambition to avert catastrophic climate change. The UK has already shown carbon abatement and prosperity can go hand-in-hand and we lead the world in clean growth, slashing emissions by more than 40% since 1990 while growing our economy ahead of the G7. There is now no excuse and real action is needed.
She added that in a “few days”, during the “first-ever Green GB Week”, the government will “outline our next steps to confront this global crisis”.
Jagoda Munić, director of Friends of the Earth Europe, said the message from the report was stark, and warned that Europe was not doing enough:
The fossil fuel age has to end ... To have any chance of avoiding the chaos, droughts and rising tides of 1.5C or more of global warming, we must massively and speedily transform our society to kick our fossil fuel addiction.
Munic said a “safer, fairer and cleaner fossil-free” Europe was possible, with many communities already showing the way, from resisting dirty energy projects to installing community-owned renewable energy schemes.
She said the EU is still planning to keep emitting carbon beyond 2050, and is currently only considering committing to “net zero emissions” by that year.
She argued that as one of the regions most responsible for causing climate change, and most capable of responding, the EU needs to act at much greater speed and scale.
The EU must do its fair share, beginning with completely stopping funding for fossil fuels and switching to 100% renewables by 2030. Currently the EU is far off track. Going to ‘net zero’ by 2050 is simply too late for Europe to stop burning carbon – and still it does not represent zero fossil fuels. Europe needs a completely fossil-free energy system by 2030.
Friends of the Earth Europe is calling on the EU to:
Urgently increase its climate ambition: increasing-short term targets to 100% renewables by 2030, and having a long-term vision in line with achieving 1.5C;
Completely phase out financing and building more fossil fuel infrastructure, including gas, which shackles Europe to decades more fossil fuel use – including a fossil-free EU budget;
Urgently increase investment in community renewables and energy savings and transform to 100% renewables based on a democratically owned energy system.
Karin Nansen, chair of Friends of the Earth International, said:
This is a climate emergency – for many around the world preventing climate catastrophe and temperature rises exceeding 1.5C is a matter of life and death. Only radical system change offers a pathway towards hope and out of despair. We want a just transition to a clean energy system that benefits people, not corporations.
The Aldersgate Group, an alliance of leading business groups committed to sustainable economy, has welcomed the report.
Here’s a selection of what some of its prominent members have said:
Steve Waygood, chief responsible investment officer, Aviva Investors:
Keeping global temperature increases to 1.5C will help safeguard our investment portfolios and protect our customers savings. The long-term negative financial consequences of climate change are far, far greater than the short-term financial risks of transitioning to the Paris agreement. Today’s report reiterates the need for policymakers to accelerate action to reduce carbon emissions and meet the agreed aims of the Paris agreement.
Gabrielle Ginér, head of environmental sustainability at BT:
Our target is to reduce the carbon emissions intensity of our operations by 87% by 2030 against a 2016/17 baseline.
Pia Heidenmark Cook, chief sustainability officer at Ikea:
We will contribute by decarbonising our energy use including electricity and heating, using zero-emissions deliveries, moving to a circular business model and enabling millions of customers and co-workers to take climate action in their everyday lives.
Benet Northcote, director of corporate responsibility at John Lewis Partnership:
We have already cut our operational emission intensity by nearly 70% since 2010 and over the coming months we will be unveiling the next stage in our plans to reduce our environmental impact and emissions even further. Waitrose and Partners continues to lead in its commitment to truly sustainable agriculture, while John Lewis and Partners is pioneering circular economy solutions that will lessen humanity’s impact on the environment.
Mike Barry, director of sustainable business at Marks and Spencer:
We need to take bolder, faster action and shift our mind-set to one of embracing the inevitability and opportunity of the low-carbon economy.
More from the Labour party on today’s IPCC report.
Rebecca Long-Bailey, Labour’s shadow business, energy and industrial strategy secretary, who seems to be fronting a lot of the party’s climate breakdown agenda, said the report makes clear that avoiding dangerous climate change will require “a transformational effort”:
That is precisely what Labour is offering – a plan to rapidly decarbonise our energy system as part of a green jobs revolution, and a long term target of net zero emissions before 2050. This would make the UK one of the few countries in the world on track to meet the Paris agreement goals.
The Tories are way off course to meeting our existing climate targets, and every day this government remains in power the window of opportunity to tackle the climate crisis shrinks. It is a cruel irony that today we were also expecting the first horizontal shale fracking in the UK – an industry the government has pushed at the expense of local communities, air quality and our climate.
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