It’s almost a literary law that the second part of a trilogy has to be depressing. Only if it looks really hopeless beforehand is the victory of the heroes deserved in the last volume. It usually works like this or something like that.
Unfortunately, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report is not a fantasy trilogy. Nevertheless, the second of the three sub-reports reads like the depressing climax before the decisive positive turn. In August, when the last part appears, we will see whether it can also exist.
It doesn’t sound like it at the moment: almost half of the world’s population lives in an area that is severely endangered by the climate crisis. This means a lack of drinking water, poorer harvests, natural disasters that are increasing in frequency and intensity and the flooding of coastal regions due to rising sea levels, annual heat waves that affect one in three people worldwide. As of now, at 1.2 degrees global warming. Meanwhile, the mass extinction of plant and animal species caused by the climate crisis has begun, the Amazon, instead of being a storehouse of CO2, is emitting it due to ongoing deforestation, and glaciers continue to melt.
Every tenth of a degree more increases the risk of flooding, crop failures, the collapse of entire ecosystems, the spread of disease and drought. The climate crisis will affect everyone in the medium and long term – just to different degrees.
All this is not new
Given the bleak prospects, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called the report an “atlas of human suffering” when it was released. He was shocked by the extent described in the report. But why? None of this is new. The report is “only” a summary of the current state of research in climate science. Science and with it the climate movement have been warning of these effects for years, sometimes even decades. Activists from countries in the Global South, which are hit hardest by the aftermath, despite having contributed little to the crisis in comparison, have long emphasized this injustice that the IPCC describes.
We already know all this. Just as we know that exceeding 1.5 degrees will make some effects of the climate crisis irreversible. The importance of tipping points and how their triggering leads to the climate crisis continuing to heat up itself has been sufficiently explained. The politicians to whom this report is explicitly addressed will have heard all of this before.
What’s really new is the fact that it’s going to be even worse than previously thought. The previous report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was published eight years ago. The devastating forest fires and floods of recent years were not predicted to the extent that we have experienced.
The clarity of the language is also new. When science uses terms like “unmistakable,” it’s clear what hit it. In their academic sobriety, the consequences seem more menacing than any doomsday performance by Extinction Rebellion. This is not an emotionalized apocalypse vision, it is scientific reality.
The Limits of Adaptation
But because after an absolutely hopeless part two no one is still in the mood for part three, which inevitably still comes, there is a glimmer of hope in the climate report: Yes, we can still turn things around and even adapt to the changed conditions.
A little straw to hold on to, because of course we don’t have much time left for this and there are clear limits to our ability to adapt.
Some ecosystems like coral reefs can’t last much longer. Island nations and communities that depend on meltwater are already reaching their limits when it comes to drinking water supplies.
It doesn’t fail because of knowledge
The third part of the report will deal with the opportunities arising from the crisis and show ways in which CO2 can be saved. In fact, it is already clear in advance that a new solution will not fall from the sky. We know the answers and have the technologies to cut emissions quickly now. What fails is not the knowledge, but the implementation.
Because when Christian Lindner suddenly announces in the Bundestag that our energy security lies in sun and wind, after years of claims that we need lignite because the alternatives cannot be relied on, that has nothing to do with the climate crisis. He only recognized that we are dependent on Russia for burning fossil fuels and that this is causing problems in the current geopolitical situation.
The IPCC cannot decide whether the trilogy ends well on paper or not. The solutions, which the scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change summarize in the last part, must be implemented at the subsequent climate conference (COP27) in Egypt. If the negotiations again fail to bring about the necessary changes in climate policy, this will be the last report by the Climate Council according to which the consequences it describes could still have been mitigated.