The World Meteorological Organisation recently tweeted this graph, saying it gave a new meaning to “off the charts”. 2023 really was the year when the earth’s climate dramatically changed. We are now very close to the 1.5C of global warming that scientists have warned us about for many years, where many feedback loops may start to kick in, threatening all life on this planet.
Scientists at the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (CCCS) said it was likely the 1.5C mark will be passed for the first time in the next 12 months.
According to NASA the last 10 years have been the 10 hottest on record.
Damian Carrington wrote in the Guardian “The Copernicus Climate Change Service highlighted a number of “remarkable” events in 2023, including huge blazes in Canada that helped drive up global carbon emissions from wildfires by 30%, and unprecedented ocean temperatures that caused marine heatwaves to strike many regions. Antarctic sea ice also crashed to record lows, having previously experienced little obvious impact from global heating.”
How are we doing locally in the quest to reduce our emissions? It is nearly 5 years since Sheffield City Council declared a climate emergency. The Tyndall Report was written in 2019 but was updated in 2022. (Download available here.) It set Sheffield a total carbon budget of 15.2 million tonnes. To stay within that budget we need to reduce emissions by 12.3% every year. If we were on track, in the last 5 years we would have reduced our emissions by about half. In figures released recently the Council say they have reduced emissions by 3% in total during this time. If I was an OFSTED climate inspector I would be awarding Sheffield Council “Inadequate” for this lack of progress but to be fair most Councils are making inadequate progress. They have been the major victims of Government austerity and struggle to provide the basic services they legally have to, like social services.
So how does Sheffield compare with other Councils? The Council Climate Action Scorecards ranks them 49th out of 180 Councils, so in the top half of the league table. Their overall score is 42% and they do well at Building and Heating and Planning and Land Use, but badly on Transport, Government and Finance and Biodiversity. Westminster tops the table at 62%, with Leeds doing well with 53%. Other South Yorks Councils are struggling in the bottom half of the table, with Rotherham on 29%, Doncaster on 27% and Bansley on 26%. It would be good to hear from our Councillors on how they are going to improve this situation.
Nationally of course our Government continue to go quickly in the wrong direction. Rishi Sunak has failed to replace the chair of the Climate Change Committee, despite Lord Debden announcing he was stepping down a year and a half ago. Environmentalists have accused the Prime Minister of deliberately holding up the appointment to minimise criticism for his U-turns on green issues, such as the granting of new oil and gas licences.
Internationally, we can’t draw any consolation from COP28, which was an unmitigated disaster. Bill Mcguire, Climate Scientist and author of Hothouse Earth tweeted “With no roadmap, no timescale and no binding element, the phrase ‘transitioning away from fossil fuels’ is utterly meaningless and worth less than the paper it is written on.”
Vanessa Nakate, climate activist from Uganda, complained the Summit has left the Global South without the finance it desperately needs. She tweeted “COP28 is the first to talk about the end of “fossil fuels”, so it tells us what we already knew – the fossil fuel era is ending. But it’s a desperately weak deal that again leaves the Global South without the climate finance it needs.”
Rupert Read points out in Resilience that “CoP28 did not call on countries to transition away from fossil fuels in their use in transportation, and certainly did not call on them to effect such transition in heavy industry (eg chemicals or steel production), or in the food system. Only in the production and transmission of ‘energy’: ie basically electricity and heating. And there is in any case a big loophole left for the continued use of fossil gas as a ‘transition fuel’ and for the unicorn of ‘carbon capture and storage’.”
The Nature Emergency isn’t going away either. Last year, according to the UN Environment Programme, the world spent $200 billion on nature-based solutions. This might sound good until you compare it with the $7 trillion we spent on “nature-negative” activities. If we spend 35 times more destroying the biosphere than trying to rescue it we shouldn’t be surprised if it collapses.
As COP28 was an unmitigated disaster we all need to respond by building resilience in our local communities. We will be severely affected by climate change in the future. Recent flooding in this country and drought in Spain have both destroyed food crops. We can expect food shortages, floods, droughts and extreme storms. This threatens to bring about the breakdown of law and order and our society. We need to do much more now to prepare, as it is clear that Councils, Governments and the United Nations are not coming to help us.
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Really well done Graham. Do you connect with the Tribune?
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