The 2015 Paris Agreement set an ambitious goal of limiting global warming to a maximum of 1.5°Celsius over the pre-industrial period. Seven years later, in April 2022, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released yet another report showing that the CO2 emissions framework remains unfavourable as it will be very difficult to reduce the release of greenhouse gases (GHGs) by 2030. That is, it would technically be possible to avoid overtaking the limit of 1.5º C, but this is unlikely to occur.

The global temperature has already increased by 1.2ºC in relation to the pre-industrial period. In the past decade the increase was 0.33º C and the pace is acceleration, as shown in the chart below NOAA. Therefore, it is very likely that the minimum limit of the Paris Agreement will be reached by 2030.

You don't want to shy away from the reality that the 1.5°C goal is in the grave. The UN Secretary-General Himself, António Guterres, made an indignant speech on the new IPCC report, stating that countries and businesses are "lying" and that the report's data give a damning verdict to humanity: "Climate activists are sometimes portrayed as dangerous radicals. Radical and truly dangerous are the countries that are increasing fossil fuel production."

Limiting global warming to 1.5°C requires immediately peaking emissions, halding pollution by 2030, and achieving zero net carbon dioxide emissions globally in the early 2050s.

But this is not being done and Russia's invasion of Ukraine has caused the price of fossil fuels to rise and generated an outcry from the elites, and even the people, for increased hydrocarbon production. In Brazil, there is a general demand for a reduction in fuel prices and very little is done in the energy transition and in the reduction of deforestation. The desire to increase consumption in general outweighs concerns about environmental and climate issues.

There is no shortage of warnings about the current crisis. On 09/07/2017, journalist David Wallace-Wells published an article called "The Uninhabitable Earth" in New York Magazine (NYMag), painting an apocalyptic setting for the Planet – a climate Armageddon – if current trends were not changed. The text began this: "It is, I promise, worse than you think". Many critics said the article was catastrophistic and did not help in the fight against global warming.

But the article went viral and was widely commented on in several countries around the world and became the magazine's most read article of all time. In 2019 the book "The Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming" was published, while climate indicators show that the homeostatic balance of the Planet is being changed and Earth is becoming increasingly inhospitable and uninhabitable (Alves, 2019).

However, it will not only be humanity that will suffer from the climate and environmental crisis, but especially the other living species on the planet. The loss of biodiversity and the 6th mass extinction of the species will cause not only an ecological tragedy, but must also reverberate on civilization, as the extinction of pollinators and the destruction of forests will accelerate global warming and exacerbate the food crisis.

Therefore, the climate and environmental emergency should cause more deaths and more suffering than the health emergency of covid-19. But the denialists accuse the real environmentalists of catastrophists and do nothing to contain the environmental catastrophe. But undoubtedly, it is necessary to know how to listen to the "catastrophistics" and put into practice the precautionary principle and not procrastinate the actions.

As Greta Thunberg said in preparatory activity for COP26 in Glasgow: "That's all we hear from our leaders: words. Words that make good, but have not provoked any action. Our hopes and dreams drown in your words of empty promises. There is no planet B, there is no planet blah-blah-blah, green economy blah-blah-blah, carbon neutrality for 2050 blah-blah-blah". She added: "30 years of blah-blah-blah of world leaders and their betrayal with current and future generations."

Humanity needs to acknowledge its mistakes and stop believing in fake news. The Earth is spherical and finite, but there are some denialists who say that the Earth is flat and others who deny the limits of growth and act as if the Earth were infinite. Humanity has already surpassed the Earth's load capacity and treats the atmosphere with utter contempt, dumping tons of CO2 every day. The worsening of the greenhouse effect is the result of the "Tragedy of the Commons", because what is a public good is being treated as a dump.

Only a drastic cut in greenhouse gas emissions can prevent catastrophic global warming. To do so, it is necessary to plan the degrowth of the demoeconomic throughout the 20th century. Demoeconomic degrowth is an imperative that must be put into practice, or the entire life of the planet will be put in danger.

Source: EcoDebate