The Ipcc's Special report (Sr15) on climate, the result of an analysis of over 5,000 studies, will be published on 8 October 2018. But the first contents are already leaking out.
To save the planet from climate catastrophe, we must drastically reduce the use of fossil fuels and carry out a rapid transition towards economic models based on renewable energy sources. If we do so, the targets set by the international community for limiting the warming of the Earth's atmosphere are still attainable. Provided that an adequate amount of resources is invested quickly, in order to ensure a strong acceleration of the process of moving away from oil, gas and coal. This is the main message of the Special Report 15 (Sr15), which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will publish on 8 October, but whose contents have already been revealed by the Afp news agency on the evening of Friday 5 and picked up by Radio Canada.
For the experts, gathered together with government representatives in South Korea from 1 October, the current trajectory will lead us to spectacularly miss the targets of the Paris Agreement. In particular, according to information that leaked to the international press even before the report's publication, the average global temperature could rise by 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels as early as between 2030 and 2052 (depending on the different scenarios taken into consideration). To avert this prospect, the only way is to radically change the way we produce energy — first and foremost by abandoning coal. This will need to translate into a 40 per cent cut in emissions by 2030. Otherwise, all efforts will be in vain.
It is precisely on this point that negotiations at the IPCC meeting held in South Korea are said to have repeatedly stalled. Afp reports that Poland, Australia and Japan are said to have firmly opposed the finger being pointed at fossil fuels. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, an oil-producing country, is said to have attacked the scientific studies underpinning the IPCC's assessments, judging them to be "not certain".
The request for the IPCC to draw up a Special report came in December 2015, when Cop 21 (the United Nations World Climate Conference) was under way, which led to the adoption of the Paris Agreement. "This decade is the crossroads decade. Everything will depend on the collective and individual decisions we take in the short term, not in some distant future," climatologist and chair of IPCC Working Group One (on the Physical Science Basis of Climate Change), Valerie Masson-Delmotte, explained to the international press. The special report arrives in conjunction with the IPCC's celebrations of its thirty years of activity. But it is, above all, a fundamental step on the path that will lead to the publication of the Sixth Assessment Report, known as Ar6, which is expected to take place in 2022. It will represent the new reference document for all those who, in various capacities, are fighting against climate change.
The concrete risk, also in light of what is contained in Special Report 15, is that the trajectory the world will be shown to have followed between now and 2022 will not be sufficient. Moreover, back in November 2017, just days before the start of Cop 23 in Bonn, the United Nations Environment Programme had sounded the alarm: between the pledges made by governments to reduce CO2 emissions and what is needed to meet the targets of the Paris Agreement, "a catastrophic gap still exists".
The agreement reached in the French capital in 2015 stipulates that the entire world should work to limit the rise in average global temperature, between now and 2100, to a maximum of 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels — aiming to remain as close as possible to 1.5 degrees. These are threshold values, since, if they are exceeded, climatic, environmental and meteorological disruptions will become catastrophic, particularly for some of the most vulnerable nations.
For this reason, before the Paris Agreement was reached, governments were asked to set out in writing — in black and white — what policies they intend to adopt to limit greenhouse gas emissions: these are contained in the "Indcs", Intended Nationally Determined Contributions. The problem is that, even at the time, calculations indicated that these pledges would not be enough to stay below 2 degrees. Institutional sources spoke of a trend that would lead to +2.7 degrees; some non-governmental organisations were even more pessimistic, suggesting that +3.5 degrees could be reached.
Staying within 1.5 degrees Celsius would significantly reduce risks — not only compared with the current trajectory, but also compared with the +2 degree scenario. The Sr15 report is the product of an assessment of around five thousand scientific studies on the subject, which were selected for their reliability, then verified and evaluated in a weighted manner (each one was assigned a specific "weight").
To appreciate the volume of work carried out, it is worth noting that the first draft of the Special Report received 13,000 comments from 489 scientists; the second version received 25,590 comments, with the number of experts involved rising to 570. Meanwhile, the summary for policymakers — that is, the document approved in South Korea — was the subject of 3,600 observations. The entire body of comments and notes was evaluated by a task force of 86 scientists from 39 countries, selected from a group of 570 super-experts.
Criticising the rigour of the working method (even for the Saudi "climate sceptics") is therefore difficult. For this reason, at Cop 23 in Bonn, presided over by the Fiji Islands in 2017, the "Talanoa Dialogue" was launched, which is expected to lead to a revision of the Indcs. "Our message," concluded Masson-Delmotte, "is not that we are now too late to act. But that we need to accelerate efforts, which are still faltering today, in order to stay in line with 1.5 degrees. Consider that, even with a stabilised temperature, sea levels will continue inexorably to rise, forcing millions of people to migrate".
