Cop 24, the climate conference, has got under way in Katowice, Poland, with the aim of approving the rules to make the Paris Agreement effective.
The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere continues to rise. It has recorded the highest rate in three million years. Greenhouse gas emissions are not only failing to fall, but continue to grow: according to the World Meteorological Organization, the 20 hottest years on record have all occurred within the last 22 years. There is no time left — the abyss is opening up beneath us and it may take only one step to be swallowed by it. The Special Report 15 (Sr15), a document produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Ipcc) and published last October, has reiterated, once again, the absolute urgency of effective measures to limit the rise in average global temperature, failing which we will face a "climate catastrophe". According to the report, we have twelve years to halve emissions in order to stay below the +1.5 degrees limit set by the Ipcc. With this goal in mind, Cop24, the United Nations climate conference for 2018, is currently under way in Katowice, Poland.
The main purpose of the negotiations, which will conclude on Friday 14 December, is to approve the rules (Paris rulebook) to make the Paris Agreement of 2015 effective. The agreement, ratified by 184 countries, sets out the objectives of global climate action and aims to keep the rise in global temperatures "well below 2 degrees Celsius". During the meeting, the initiatives taken by the 198 member states to combat climate change will also be examined and assessed.
Collective action by states is necessary to achieve the agreed objective; however, many aspects of the Paris Agreement are not binding on the countries that have signed it, and the United Nations cannot enforce compliance. Yet the gap between the commitments made and those required remains far too wide, as the Ipcc report makes clear. "The outcomes of this conference will lay the foundations for multilateral, sustained progress in the fight against climate change at the pace and speed needed to live up to what science tells us," said Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, the Wwf's Climate and Energy lead. "The scale of the challenge — and the opportunity — that this meeting represents should help us to be effective and focused."
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We have clean energy and the technologies to make the most of it at our disposal; we could definitively stop extracting fossil fuels and halt climate change, yet the opposite is happening. Global oil consumption has, for the first time in history, come close to one hundred million barrels per day, and investment in the extraction of highly polluting fuels such as lignite and tar sands continues.
During the electoral campaign that would bring him to the presidency of the United States, Donald Trump had lashed out against the Paris Agreement, announcing that he would not honour the climate commitments made by the previous administration. However, Article 28 of the Paris Agreement stipulates that no country may withdraw from the agreement until three years after its entry into force. The United States is therefore continuing to send its delegations, pending 2020. Just a few days ago, Brazil announced its intention to withdraw from hosting Cop 25, scheduled for 2 to 13 December 2019, dispelling any remaining doubts about the anti-environmentalist stance of newly elected president Jair Bolsonaro.
Climate change is altering entire ecosystems, forcing the organisms that inhabit them to move in search of more favourable climates. For thousands of animal and plant species, the rise in temperature could prove fatal, and the difference between an increase of 1.5 or 2 degrees is, literally, a matter of life and death. Coral reefs, for example — invaluable treasuries of marine biodiversity — are in grave danger precisely because of water warming. This phenomenon is causing coral bleaching, as a result of which, according to researchers, coral reefs will be the first ecosystems to reach ecological extinction in the modern era. Global warming threatens, directly or indirectly, many animals: koalas, which are being forced to drink due to increasingly hot weather; many reptiles whose sex is determined by the temperature to which eggs are exposed risk extinction; terns, forced to migrate in search of cooler climates; and ibexes, watching the Alpine pastures on which they depend shrink. The disappearance of these and tens of thousands of other species represents an incalculable loss for our planet and our species. According to a recent study, it will take between 3 and 5 million years for biodiversity to return to current levels — but we, perhaps, will no longer be here.
In addition to making the Paris Agreement effective, Cop 24 should, according to the Wwf, embark on a series of initiatives, including strengthening climate action both before and after 2020, accompanied by financing and other support for developing countries. It should also make the nations involved more accountable, increase the transparency of their actions to address climate change, and acknowledge the inadequacy of the measures taken, providing clear guidance on what needs to be done, including better integration of nature-based measures.
