By Tracy Sherlock
If we stop emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, temperatures will start coming down within three to five years, experts told a global press briefing preparing journalists to report on the next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.
This science has been around for the past decade and was included in the last IPCC report, but it didn’t receive a lot of attention, panelists at the February 16 briefing said.
“We can’t avoid climate damage because it’s here. But what we can do is try to limit that damage,” said panelist Dr. Michael E. Mann, a professor of Atmospheric Science at the Pennsylvania State University.
Carbon sinks like oceans will continue to capture carbon, even after carbon emissions are reduced, which is why temperatures will level off once emissions stop, Mann said. But some impacts, like sea-level rise, will continue and changes need to happen quickly to prevent warming of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, he said.
“To limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius … we’ve got to bring carbon emissions down by 50 per cent within this decade, so we’ve got to come down the other side of the mountain,” Mann said. “The good news is we’re sort of riding along the summit now because carbon emissions are no longer rising, but we’ve got to bring them down and we’ve got to bring them down quickly.”
Carbon emissions must be cut in half by 2030 and eliminated by 2050, Mann said.
The press briefing, called The Best Climate Science You’ve Never Heard Of, was hosted by Covering Climate Now, a group of more than 460 media partners with an estimated audience of more than 2 billion people from 57 countries. People from around the world attended, including from the United States, Bangladesh, Costa Rica, Ireland, Poland, Canada and other countries.
The biggest obstacle to tackling the climate emergency is people thinking there is nothing we can do, said Mark Hertsgaard, Covering Climate Now’s executive director. Knowing that temperatures could stop rising if emissions ceased changes the game.
“It’s not a get-out-of-jail-free card, … but if we lower the emissions quickly we can get there – we can avoid the worst,” Hertsgaard said. “That means that we’re not necessarily doomed after all.”
He urges journalists to focus on three key areas: psychology, politics and policy. Once people see that there is still hope, they will get even more involved in politics, by attending marches or making sure they vote. Once there is a critical mass involved politically, policy change will happen, Hertsgaard said.
Journalists have a critical role to play in informing the public and focusing on solutions to the climate emergency, Hertsgaard said.
Professor Saleemul Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development in Dhaka and a professor at the Independent University in Bangladesh said his country is on the front lines of the climate emergency, but they are “not all doom and gloom.”
Bangladesh is a low-lying country between two major rivers, so it is regularly flooded and cyclones are a common occurrence, Huq said, but the people there are finding solutions.
“The most vulnerable people in Bangladesh are now the best adapters in the world. They are facing the problem and they are tackling it,” Huq said. “They aren’t solving it – we still get the floods and the cyclones, but they don’t defeat us. … That’s a lesson that all countries will have to learn.”
The world has been dawdling since the Paris agreement, he said.
“They don’t feel the emergency. It’s their kids who are going to make them feel the emergency. The old people don’t get it, the young people do,” Huq said. “The elders have failed us, quite clearly – 30 years of failure, of not heeding the advice from the scientific community.”
Mann said the G7 countries need to “step up their commitments to the rest of the world” to solve the climate emergency, and it’s urgent.
“The bottom line is we’re already dealing with a new normal, if you like, that’s the best case scenario, … but we can prevent it from getting worse,” Mann said.
Tracy Sherlock can be contacted at Tracy.sherlock@kpu.ca .