Exclusive
Status: 08/18/2021 6:31 p.m.
If greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, the world is only three years away from even squandering the two-degree climate target. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change sees this danger according to a leaked draft report.
Stopping global warming before the 1.5-degree threshold is exceeded – this lofty goal of the Paris climate protection agreement must now be lost. But even for a restriction to two degrees there is apparently very little time left. To do this, global carbon dioxide emissions would have to peak before 2025, i.e. in three years at the latest. This is what it says in a text penned by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is due to appear next March. Specifically, it is a draft of a short version of Part III of the new World Climate Report. It deals with measures to mitigate climate change.
An organization called “Scientist Rebellion” has the confidential paper attached to the WDR present, put into circulation. According to their own statement, behind this are scientists for whom energetic action against global warming will no longer tolerate any delay. It is to be feared that the report section in the later final version will be watered down by politics, so the activists.
Climate Bible in three parts
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) publishes its status reports in three parts. The report by Working Group I deals with the physical principles of global warming and reflects the status of actual climate research. Part II discusses the effects of climate change and Part III measures to mitigate it.
The now sixth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been delayed by months due to the Corona crisis. Working Group I presented its almost 4000-page report at the beginning of August. Parts II and III should appear in February and March of next year. So far, only confidential drafts exist of them and their summaries, the “Summaries for Political Decision-Makers”.
Short grace period for fossil fuels
From a global perspective, the energy transition is lagging far behind the goals of the Paris climate protection agreement, according to the draft. If the 1.5 degree target is to remain the guideline, coal and natural gas power plants may only be operated for nine and twelve years, respectively. For the two-degree target, the remaining terms will be extended to 16 and 17 years, respectively. However, there is a catch to this calculation: it does not take into account any new systems such as those that are still being built and planned in China and Turkey.
Elsewhere in the draft report it says that all current and planned fossil fuel power plants will still emit nearly 850 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the air. That is more than twice as much CO2 as would be allowed to reach the 1.5 degree target. Even the remaining budget for the two-degree target – according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 870 billion tons – is almost exhausted.
Above all, wealthy countries have a duty
The IPCC authors see the affluent countries in particular as having a duty to drastically change course. The richest ten percent of the world’s population caused around 40 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. Two thirds of them lived in industrialized and one third in emerging countries. The poorest ten percent, on the other hand, are only responsible for four percent of total emissions.
The “strongest driver of emissions” is not the increase in the world population, but the steady increase in the gross national product in the developed countries of the world. An example of this is the sharp increase in “greenhouse gas-intensive activities” mentioned in the draft over the past decade. Air traffic has grown by 29 percent, the use of SUVs in road traffic by 17 percent and the energy requirement for air conditioning by 40 percent. As the paper also emphasizes, significant emissions in developing countries are associated with the production of export goods for rich countries. In 2015 this proportion was 41 percent.
Idle agricultural sector
The draft complains that methane and nitrous oxide have not yet been taken into account in many national climate protection strategies. The two greenhouse gases come from cattle farming and the use of nitrogen fertilizers, among other things. The IPCC draft therefore confirms that the agricultural sector has a lot of catching up to do: “In the scenarios that limit warming to 1.5 and two degrees, agriculture and forestry must increase their emission reduction measures fivefold within this decade and tenfold by 2050 . “
400 billion US dollars would have to be reallocated every year in the global agricultural sector. There is great potential for avoiding emissions in more gentle tillage and better nutrient management in the field and stable – and on the consumer side in avoiding food waste and switching to a less meaty diet: “A plant-based diet could avoid up to 50 percent of emissions, which are now associated with the so-called Western diet, “states the draft.
Should climate protection be “hip”?
The IPCC sees progressive urbanization as problematic. Cities could need 90 billion tons of concrete, cement and other building materials in 2050, more than twice as much as in 2010. The report sees possible solutions to counteract this in greater material recycling, avoidance of unnecessary construction waste and the use of wood for house building.
In the transport sector, well-known but not adequately implemented things are recommended: greater use of public transport and car-sharing offers, avoiding air travel and perhaps even the car: “People with a high socio-economic status” can easily reduce their emissions to reduce and thus become “trendsetters for a low-carbon lifestyle”, one reads in the text. Ten to 30 percent of the population would have to participate: “Then new social norms will develop.”