Under the gray sky of the Chinese province of Sichuan, an airplane-like drone of hunting is about to take off. Its mission: to release silver iodide into the atmosphere in a scientifically haphazard attempt to bring rain to combat a drought caused by the world’s worst heat wave since the first temperature measurements.
Meanwhile, a few thousand kilometers to the west, authorities in Pakistan are finding “a humanitarian disaster of considerable magnitude attributable to climate change” – caused this time not by a lack, but by an excess of precipitation, which caused deadly floods.
These events on the same day – August 25, 2022 – are clear evidence of the new climate reality we live in. Never had the dangers of global warming appeared with such terrifying clarity. Yet, when it comes to international action, we are regressing in many respects.
It has been a year since representatives from nearly 200 countries gathered at COP26, the climate summit held in Glasgow, UK. The flagship commitments that were made then have not been kept, partly because of the energy crisis induced by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And everything suggests that COP27, which is to be held [du 6 au 18 novembre] in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, will not change much.
A bit of optimism
However, by scratching a little, we find some encouraging signs. Renewable energies have never been so competitive. Sales of electric vehicles are taking off. Even the ongoing energy crisis, which has led to a run on fossil fuels this year, may well end up accelerating the transition to clean energy. If the inventory of the fight against climate change inclines to pessimism, is there still a little room for a bit of optimism?
To take stock of the progress on the eve of COP27, it is useful to go back to the Paris agreement, signed in 2015 [après la COP21]. This aimed to limit [d’ici à 2100] global warming to 2°C above pre-industrial temperatures – and preferably 1.5°C.
What the signatory countries however did not do [à ce moment-là]is to commit to taking measures to reduce emissions [de gaz à effet de serre] necessary to achieve this. They were not required to do so, the terms of the agreement providing that it is up to each country to announce what it wishes to implement to fight against climate change by 2030.
These measures, which are based on the principle of voluntary participation, are known as “Nationally Determined Contributions” (NDCs). The gaping chasm that exists between desires and commitments, not to mention actions, had to be closed by a ratchet mechanism. Countries are indeed supposed to revise their ambitions upwards at regular intervals and present strengthened NDCs. The first ratchet was to come on the eve of COP26, which had been postponed for a year due to the Covid-19 pandemic. To some extent, the ratchet effect worked.
Some high-income countries and political organizations, including the European Union, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, have indeed presented strengthened NDCs in the run-up to the Glasgow summit, although many others didn’t.
In 2100, a temperature increase of about 2.4°C
According to Climate Action Tracker – an independent research group that assesses the effect of climate policies and roadmaps – the world was on a trajectory of 3.6°C warming by 2100 before the Paris, although with “a considerable margin of error due to uncertainties related to the climate system”. Current policies would lead to a warming of around 2.7°C – within plus or minus 1 degree – by 2100. If countries implement all of their NDCs, the warming would be around 2.4°C in 2100.
On the one hand, progress has therefore been made since Paris, since more than 1 additional degree of warming has undoubtedly been avoided. On the other hand, at COP26, Climate Action Tracker called the current policies and roadmaps“insufficient” to contain global warming to 1.5°C. In fact, the rise