“The planet is broken”: bleak news on the climate

“The planet is broken”: gloomy news on the climate – but also hope

C. Oelrich, G. Forster and C. Horsten / dpa

Three climate reports and UN Secretary-General António Guterres painted a bleak picture of the state of the earth in the climate crisis on Wednesday, but also linked hope for improvement with the crown’s exit from the pandemic. According to preliminary analyzes by the World Weather Organization (WMO), 2020 will likely be one of the three hottest since the start of temperature records in the mid-19th century. The World Conservation Organization (IUCN) now sees climate change as the greatest threat to world natural heritage sites.

Meanwhile, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) warned in another climate report released Wednesday that currently planned global production of fossil fuels is too high to meet the Paris climate targets by 2030. “Our planet is destroyed, “said UN chief Guterres at Columbia University in New York in a speech on the state of the earth. The way out of the crown crisis offers an opportunity in this regard. “The recovery of the crown and the repair of the planet may be two sides of the same coin.”

The president of the Paris climate conference and former French prime minister Laurent Fabius called on governments to set and achieve medium- and short-term climate goals. It is not enough to set long-term goals that are uncertain whether they will ever be implemented. This is the challenge for the United Nations climate conference in Glasgow next year.

The upcoming summit is considered particularly important: by then, states should make their climate protection plans more ambitious. After all, they are still far from sufficient in total to meet the 2015 Paris climate agreement goal of limiting global warming to well below two degrees.

The currently planned global production of fossil fuels is too high to be able to reach the Paris climate goals by 2030, stressed the UN environmental program UNEP. To limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the international community is expected to reduce its fossil fuel production by about 6% per year by 2030. Currently, however, an annual increase of two is expected. Percent: By 2030, twice as many fossil fuels will be produced as the Paris climate target.

The head of the United Nations environmental program, Inger Andersen, said the corona pandemic offers an opportunity to revitalize the world’s economies through “investment in low-carbon energy and infrastructure.”

The World Weather Organization announced that the average temperature for Europe in the first ten months of 2020 was higher than ever. It is already clear that the years since 2015 are the six warmest since the start of the measurements. The temperature record was reached in 2016 with more than 1.2 degrees compared to the pre-industrial level.

Current forecasts refer to measurements from January to October. During these months the global average temperature was 1.11-1.23 degrees above the average of the years 1850 to 1900. Nevertheless, the meteorological phenomenon of La Niña, which occurs every few years and is actually accompanied by a drop in temperature developed in September. The results of the measurements north of the Arctic Circle in Siberia were particularly dramatic: the temperature from January to October was more than five degrees above the average from 1981 to 2010.

WMO Director General Petteri Taalas also sees reason for optimism, because more and more – and especially the big countries – are moving towards the goal of CO2 neutrality. He named the EU, Japan, South Korea and, in the near future, the United States. “China is also the country with the highest CO2 emissions – it’s good news that China joins the club of CO2 neutral countries,” Taalas said. He hoped that Russia and India would do it quickly too.

The IUCN, the world’s largest network of governmental and non-governmental environmental organizations, has announced that climate change has now also become the greatest threat to world natural heritage sites. Global warming is a “high or very high threat” in one third of areas. In 2014 this was only a quarter. The World Heritage Site Wadden Sea in the North Sea is also one of the regions affected by a “very high threat” from climate change. (sda / dpa)