The news should normally have occupied all the space given the importance of the issue and the gravity of the situation. Instead, the voluminous report went almost completely unnoticed a decade ago as everyone’s eyes were on the ongoing drama in Ukraine.
© Aris Messinis Agence France-Presse
Suburbs northwest of Kyiv, such as Irpin (pictured) and Boutcha, have been under shellfire and shelling for more than a week, prompting a mass evacuation.
Ultimate scientific reference on the subject, the new version of the evaluation report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) did not have, as one might suspect, a lot of good news to present to humanity. It is “an atlas of human suffering”, summed up the UN Secretary General, António Guterres.
Scientists note that global warming is going even faster than feared and that some of its impacts are now “irreversible”. In this context, not only is there not a moment to lose in reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions before the situation deteriorates even further, but we must also, finally, take serious about the need to adapt to the new world we have already entered. “Any delay […] will cause us to miss the brief window of opportunity to secure a viable future for all of us and which is rapidly closing. »
Meanwhile, on the forehead
But the planet’s attention is elsewhere. It is occupied by the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, arousing disgust and anger in several countries which seek to rescue the victims and punish the aggressors.
We are also very concerned about the impact that this war could have on the world economy and that it is already having on the main goods exported by the countries directly involved, starting with oil, gas and coal, but also cereals, minerals or fertilizers.
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The price increases being talked about these days are bound to hit wallets and minds, especially in times of high inflation. JPMorgan Chase bank is already predicting that they will cut global growth by 0.8 percentage points this year and almost triple in the euro zone. Others did not fail to recall the riots in some fifty poor countries that had been provoked by the last sharp increases in world food prices in 2007-2008.
On the fossil fuel side, we are working hard to find other sources of supply replacing Russia. Producing countries like Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Iran suddenly seem more likeable to us. In Canada, voices are already being raised to call for revival of oil and gas projects believed to be dead and buried. In the United States, there is also talk of reopening wells that had been closed.
In Europe, where we are 40% dependent on Russian gas imports, there is no question of giving it up for the moment. In fact, if a country like Germany continues to have plans to derive 100% of its energy from renewable sources by 2035 and thus achieve its “energy freedom”, in the meantime, we even increased his dependency over the years.
A wasted crisis
The terrible economic drag caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the formidable recovery plans rolled out by governments should have served at least to accelerate the transition to a greener economy. But of the roughly $14 trillion G20 governments spent on stimulus in 2020 and 2021, $860 billion, or 6%, went to programs that could reduce GHG emissions, reported a study published earlier this month by the journal Nature. If the effort in this area had at least been equivalent to what they had done during the financial crisis of 2008-2009 (16%), the sums invested would have been more like 2200 billion.
It might have helped not to witness an economic recovery where, rather than declining, global GHG emissions from the energy sector hit an all-time high in 2021. growth in the burning of coal, the worst of fossil fuels, reported this week the International Energy Agency. And it’s a safe bet that this source of energy will also be part of the alternatives that will be put forward to replace Russian imports.
The portrait is not completely black, and appearances can be deceiving, recalled this week the Financial Times. This recourse to coal and the sharp increase in the price of fossil fuels in recent months are in particular the result of a limited supply and under-investment in the development of new resources in the sector precisely because investors and companies believe less and less in the future of these forms of energy. The problem is that the development of green technologies and their deployment are not happening fast enough in parallel.
“The truth is that we have never seen an urgency in climate change unlike the urgency we feel today in the war in Ukraine,” lamented an expert quoted in a British daily.