Guest essay by Eric Worrall

“a damning indictment of failed climate leadership”: UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres stops short of openly offering his services as global climate dictator, but I think we get the idea.

IPCC adaptation report ‘a damning indictment of failed global leadership on climate’ 

28 February 2022

UN scientists on Monday delivered a stark warning about the impact of climate change on people and the planet, saying that ecosystem collapse, species extinction, deadly heatwaves and floods are among the “unavoidable multiple climate hazards” the world will face over the next two decades due to global warming,  

“This report is a dire warning about the consequences of inaction,” said Hoesung Lee, Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

“It shows that climate change is a grave and mounting threat to our wellbeing and a healthy planet. Our actions today will shape how people adapt and nature responds to increasing climate risks,” he said, adding: “Half measures are no longer an option.”

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UN Secretary-General António Guterres called the first report, issued last August, a “code red for humanity”, and said that “If we combine forces now, we can avert climate catastrophe.”

‘Clobbered by climate change’

His take on the latest report is equally stark: he laments that the evidence detailed by IPCC is unlike anything he has ever seen, calling it an “atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership.”

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Criminal abdication of leadership

Mr. Guterres said the world’s biggest polluters are guilty of arson of our only home.

In the face of such dire evidence, it is essential to meet the goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees, and the science shows that will require the world to cut emissions by 45 percent by 2030 and achieve net zero emissions by 2050.

“But according to current commitments, global emissions are set to increase almost 14 per cent over the current decade. That spells catastrophe. It will destroy any chance of keeping 1.5 alive,” said the UN chief.

One of the report’s core truths is that coal and other fossil fuels are choking humanity, the Secretary-General explained, calling on all G20 governments to live up to their agreements to stop funding coal abroad, and the must now urgently do the same at home and dismantle their coal fleets.

Adaptation saves lives

The second core finding from he IPCC report is slightly better news: investments in adaptation work.

“As climate impacts worsen – and they will – scaling up investments will be essential for survival. Adaptation and mitigation must be pursued with equal force and urgency. That’s why I have been pushing to get to 50 per cent of all climate finance for adaptation,” Mr. Guterres explained.

Noting that the Glasgow commitment on adaptation funding is clearly not enough to meet the challenges faced by nations on the frontlines of the climate crisis he said that he is also pressing to remove the obstacles that prevent small island states and least developed countries from getting the finance they desperately need to save lives and livelihoods.

“We need new eligibility systems to deal with this new reality. Delay means death,” he said.

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Read more: https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/02/1112852

The full report is available here. Unsurprisingly even the executive summary mentions “distributive justice” – the imposition of global communism to defeat the carbon hobgoblin. I think the world has had enough of remote dictators messing up everyone’s lives.

The report species loss predictions in my opinion are absurd. Up to 14% species loss at 1.5C, 29% at 3C. Mild positive temperature excursions in past epochs never caused such losses. The Roman and Medieval warming were periods of abundance. Viking artefacts from the Medieval warm period are still being released today, by the glaciers which covered them during the Little Ice Age. In my opinion this is compelling evidence that the relatively recent past was at least as warm as today, if not warmer.

Of course, the losses mostly occur somewhere else. You can’t see it, you have to take their word for it.

Food security features heavily. Apparently after decades of successful adaption and rising yields, our farmers will suddenly forget how to farm. Or maybe the plan is to deny them nitrate fertiliser (nitrous oxides are potent greenhouse gasses), then blame falling yields on climate change.

Sadly this UN fantasy / power grab will not be the last. But the predictions of this report are so dire, imminent and ridiculous, future historians will surely mark this as the year the United Nations jumped the shark on climate change.