SIX months ago world leaders made grand promises to act on climate change. A war, an energy crisis and an inflation spike later, it is hard to find signs that the vows made at the COP26 summit in Glasgow, UK, are being honoured.
Germany is building new gas terminals in haste, the UK is mulling classifying gas production as a green investment and Chinese coal production was up 10 per cent in the first four months of the year.
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Yet climate change marches inexorably on regardless. India has been hit by earlier heatwaves than usual. The Great Barrier Reef bleached despite cooling from the La Ni帽a weather pattern this year. Sea level rise, atmospheric greenhouse gas levels and ocean heat in 2021.
Science shows in forensic detail how close we are to dangerous thresholds. Since COP26, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has found warming has already led to irreversible impacts and said hitting the goal of staying below 1.5掳C of warming is still technically possible 鈥� just. Yet recent analysis shows there is now a 48 per cent chance of temporarily exceeding 1.5掳C within the next five years.
You might hope governments would be scrambling to act urgently. But to date none has advanced a stronger carbon-cutting plan in 2022 than was declared at or ahead of COP26, despite this being a key promise at the summit. The Glasgow deal鈥檚 headline pledge to phase down coal has been met by in response to a spike in energy demand related to its heatwave. And COP26 president Alok Sharma said this week that too little progress had been made on doubling cash for lower-income nations to adapt to a rapidly heating world.
Sharma also reminded us that climate change is a 鈥渃hronic danger鈥� that will continue to be buffeted by acute challenges, be it economic woes, conflicts or viruses. Crucially, those short-term threats will increasingly be made worse by the climate crisis, like only to be confronted with covid-19 at evacuation shelters. Sharma is right to remind us. We can鈥檛 wait another six months to get serious about our gravest long-term crisis.
