3 November 2017
Cllr Shane Collins writes:
Most of us are aware that the Paris Climate Change Conference agreed voluntary pledges for countries to drop their greenhouse gas emissions but what that will mean in terms of global temperature rise? Without the Paris pledges being honoured, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) expects a 4-6ºC rise by around the year 2100. Even with the Paris pledges, it now looks like a 3-4ºC rise.
Academics suggest a 4ºC rise will mean a 30-40% drop in food production – famine, mass migration and the end of an organised global community. The sad fact is that, since the first IPCC Report in 1990, we have been warned, so there is no excuse for ignorance on the part of policy makers, academia or the media. The IPCC Report called for a 60% cut in emissions to stabilise CO2 levels. Instead, 27 years later, we have in fact increased our emissions by 60% ! The older generations need to apologise to younger generations for knowingly doing nothing and vastly increasing the risk of runaway or abrupt climate change for young people.
We now have a short time frame to make massive cuts to greenhouse gases or face a very different kind of civilisation in the next few decades. Obviously civilisation is not going to turn off overnight - but as anyone in Florida, Portugal or the Ganges will confirm, climate change's new reality is starting.
Cllr Shane Collins (right) warns that urgent international action is needed on climate change
To make the huge cuts in emissions needed to keep under 2ºC means system change. We need a 'Green New Deal' to aim for zero CO2 by 2035. That means 50% cut by 2020, 75% by 2025, and 100% by 2035, and changing the way our economy works. We need the biggest cuts from the 10% highest energy users who produce around 50% of emissions - an uncomfortable fact for many of us in the developed world. We have the ideas and technology but need
the political will to make the changes to keep below 2ºC and have a reasonable chance of saving ourselves.
The challenges to stopping climate change and living with it are the same - providing our basic needs as close to home as possible. So local food, local energy, retrofitting housing and building resilient local networks. We can and must act individually but we need a green government to make national changes quickly enough.
For more info, go to kevinanderson.info or come to Nikki Jones's climate change talks in Frome: frometowncouncil.gov.uk/nikki-jones-energy-climate-change-talks
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