Climate situation now dire, IPCC reports
(CNS): In the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, published Monday, scientists are warning that any further delay in concerted global action will miss the brief, rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable future for humanity. The new report stressed the urgency of immediate and more ambitious action to address climate risks and that governments must work at the local level to reclaim their countries’ natural environments as well as reduce emissions and pollution.
“This report is a dire warning about the consequences of inaction,” said Hoesung Lee, Chair of the IPCC in a press release announcing the publication of the report. “It shows that climate change is a grave and mounting threat to our well-being and a healthy planet.”
The report follows a working group meeting over the last two weeks where scientists examined the situation. They said that the world is already facing multiple climate hazards and over the next two decades even temporarily exceeding 1.5°C warming level will result in additional severe impacts, some of which will be irreversible.
Increased heatwaves, droughts and floods are already exceeding plants’ and animals’ tolerance thresholds, driving mass mortalities in species such as trees and corals. These weather extremes are occurring simultaneously, causing cascading impacts that are increasingly difficult to manage. They have exposed millions of people to acute food and water insecurity.
Risks for society are constantly increasing now, including risks to infrastructure and low-lying coastal areas such as the Cayman Islands. In the regional assessment, this report shows that for low-lying small island communities the continued degradation of terrestrial and marine ecosystems due to negative human impacts are putting human lives at risk and increasing the probability of species extinction.
New studies highlight an extinction risk of 100% for endemic species within insular biodiversity hotspots, including within the Caribbean.
“Severe coral bleaching, together with declines in coral abundance have been observed in many small islands,” the report states. “Under future climate scenarios some small islands will experience severe coral bleaching on an annual basis before 2040. Above 1.5°C, globally inclusive of small islands, it is projected there will be further loss of 70–90% of reef-building corals, with 99% of corals being lost under warming of 2°C or more above the pre-industrial period.”
Cayman has suffered numerous beaching incidences and is now also contending with stony coral tissue loss disease, the invasive lionfish and a decline in the parrotfish population, as well as beach erosion caused by sea-level rise and poor coastal development decisions. The continued destruction of wetlands is another major threat to the Cayman Islands’ future diversity and resilience.
The IPCC report also highlighted poor planning as a key issue that must be addressed, otherwise the ability of communities to withstand global warming will be undermined.
“Healthy ecosystems are more resilient to climate change and provide life-critical services such as food and clean water,” said IPCC Working Group II Co-Chair Hans-Otto Pörtner. “By restoring degraded ecosystems and effectively and equitably conserving 30 to 50 percent of Earth’s land, freshwater and ocean habitats, society can benefit from nature’s capacity to absorb and store carbon, and we can accelerate progress towards sustainable development, but adequate finance and political support are essential.”
Scientists point out that climate change interacts with global trends such as unsustainable use of natural resources, growing urbanization, social inequalities, losses and damages from extreme events and a pandemic, jeopardizing future development.
Some of the worst problems can be avoided by involving everyone in planning, attention to equity and justice, and drawing on indigenous and local knowledge, the scientists found.
However, here in Cayman, the public is still waiting to see amendments to the planning law that would enable Premier Wayne Panton’s stated policy of building climate resilience into the country’s future.
Members of the public in the Cayman Islands are excluded from planning decisions and can only stand by and watch as the planning authorities give permission time and time again for projects that destroy our environment, from the clearing of mangroves to the waiving of coastal setbacks that continue to erode the beaches and degrade the marine environment.
“Climate change is a global challenge that requires local solutions,” the report notes.
To avoid the mounting loss of life, biodiversity and infrastructure, ambitious accelerated action is required, the IPCC experts said, pointing to the need for humanity to adapt to climate change, while making rapid and deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
However, the report notes that progress on adaptation is uneven and there are increasing gaps between action taken and what is needed to deal with the increasing risks.
“The scientific evidence is unequivocal: climate change is a threat to human well-being and the health of the planet. Any further delay in concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future,” said Hans-Otto Pörtner.
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Category: Climate Change, Science & Nature
We need to do our part and not pick and choose because of inconvenience
Pollution causing cruise ships should be banned
Protected cycle lanes should have been provided long ago, many people don’t bicycle because it is too dangerous.
Working from home should be encouraged to reduce congestion, but it isn’t
Our electricity is generated from fossil fuel
We don’t do vehicle emissions testing
There are many other small things we could do but don’t, because it doesn’t suit us.
Truly third world country
Thank you CNS for making it easy for us to access the full IPCC report. You provide
an essential service.
Potato
Cayman Brac
The new Narrative to raise HUGE amounts of money. Again😉
Hey, I’m no conspiracist nut-case but I see coincidences in some of Nostradamus’ predictions. I’m religious but not a “Bible-beater” and I see coincidences in a lot of the Bible’s fore-tellings. Perhaps none of us can conceive a time-frame for these “things-to-be”, in the relativity of time, then again perhaps we might. These might be the proverbial “last days”…for the next ???? years? In our lifetime? What if..???
What is clear is that, despite our achievements as a human race, mankind has pushed our planet to its limits…and Mother Nature has a way of returning things to a balance. The radical damage to the environment could well be corrected with a equally radical solution.
In my opinion, this Eden is dying. I can’t even imagine the world in another 100 years!
Our intelligence and our technology have given us the power to affect the climate. How will we use this power? Are we willing to tolerate ignorance and complacency in matters that affect the entire human family? Do we value short-term advantages above the welfare of the Earth?- Carl Sagan
The materialistic will always prefer to co-exist with handbags rather than the environment.
Welcome to late-stage capitalism, where self-worth is determined by your possessions and image is everything. We work like dogs to make it happen, but truth be known, my dog has a better life than me.
Not me. Apparently you are not doing it right.
Industrialized nations continue to disregard the urgency to take meaningful action. Typical of some human beings. Geronimo said it best about some…get as much as you can fast as you can, that’s their way.
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/596137-pfizer-vaccine-significantly-less-effective-in-kids-5-11-study
read Sabrina before preaching
Parrot fish should be a protected fish in our waters. There is no need to consume a fish that is vital to our marine health.
There is no need to develope inside marine parks or a cruise port which one also undermine what is vital to our marine health.
Climate gonna change. China ain’t gonna change. Not to mention India. Too many people.
I’m afraid that the dire situation will not change as long as the industrialized nations continue with their current models.
Small island nations, yes that includes Cayman, is at their mercy.
In the absence of taking in a huge mangrove replanting project along the coastline, where possible, there is nothing we can do to reverse this.
We can damn well clean up our act: dump, overbuilding, building too close to the beach, no meaningful recycling, trading beneficial flora for condos, etc. etc. It’s a win-win, because no matter what occurs, it is to our and our children’s benefit.
No one said to throw the baby out with the bath water. The poster simply stated the facts. We are limited in what we can do to ACTUALLY DIVERT what’s coming ahead.
Don’t get all caught up and high and mighty about taking the higher road.
We can go back to carbon neutral tomorrow, it won’t benefit our children at all, if the rest of the REAL culprits around the world don’t clean up their act.
People have a funny way of sticking their heads in the sand when it comes to this issue. Cayman isn’t in a bubble. We will suffer the same (probably worst) consequences as every other island nation/country.
We didn’t create this problem, our negligible contribution alone wouldn’t have change the global climate in any way if it was just us.
I know people who want to save every tree on this island, but go and eat steak twice a week!!!! Go figure.
Saving the environment as I drive my Tesla to a restaurant to dine on juicy and tender prime rib before returning to my 7000 square foot McMansion home climate controlled to a cool and comfortable 66 degrees that required the removal of mangroves to build.
“there is nothing we can do to reverse this” THAT is what I was responding to. I’m tired of hearing that we’re helpless to affect any positive change due to our small size.
Agree that our efforts are less than a drop in the bucket as compared to the global picture. Still, there is plenty that we can do to help ourselves.
So you are saying that regardless of what happens to the rest of the world, we somehow will be able mitigate the affects here???!!! Oh do tell, we want to hear this.
No. Listen, you picked this inane fight, based upon your assumptions.
I am not a climatologist, but a conservationist. I think there are tons of things we can do — real things that could make a difference to these islands.
I don’t care about paying lip service to climate change, and I don’t support sending politicians to grandiose meetings around the world. I think that sort of thing is a waste of money and time.
I hear and read people espousing just giving up, like we should be just leaves upon the wind. Maybe I was a tad hard on 4:37 above, however it feels to me like we are on the cusp of losing that which was once pure and natural on Grand Cayman. We have a festering dump in which the popular plan last I read was to move it out of sight to a lined pit. Wow what a great solution. We had a bid at one time for a WTE facility. What happened to that?
We are overbuilding and killing off great tracts of mangrove. I’m not a ‘tree-hugger’ as one person inferred, but dammitall, where does it end? When all our beaches are as eroded as Miami? When there are no trees and no sustainable ecology?
You get me now? I don’t care about carbon credits or offsets or arbitrary data points in modeling or funding hollow studies.
It’s about what we can do to help US and future generations. It’s about taking responsibility for cleaning up our own shit.
To effectively halt destruction of the local environment would require drastic changes to our immigration policy as well. No one can dispute OVERDEVELOPMENT has been the main cause of environmental destruction in Cayman. How many people are willing to talk about that???
I would guess very few — at least among those who profit from the overdevelopment.
The rest, well…. we are without iron. We elect leaders who do whatever they want, and we are thought to not be intelligent enough to collectively decide our own fate.
Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.
Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Sagan was and remains one of my heroes. More than that, his insights can be realised again and again with every reading. Thank you!
A plant-based diet uses 75-95% less water, uses 93-95% less land (ie stops/reverses deforestation of our already limited C02 sequestering capacity), causes 87-90% less emissions. Meat and dairy western diet accounts for more annual warming gas emissions than all the vehicles, ships, and planes on earth combined. It’s also killing us with epidemic rates of CVD, Type 2 diabetes, and various preventable cancers.
In terms of immediately actionable every-day personal mitigations: “plant-based” diet is mentioned no less than 241 times in 2022’s AR6, which is up from just 66 times in 2014’s AR5. You’d never know it looking at Cayman’s restaurant menus.
Agreed on a plant based diet, but I will miss driving my Tesla to dine on delicious marbled streak weekly. I suppose I can just have a salad in my mansion that required the removal of native plants and trees.
The consumer habits of our guests and residents are always evolving. Prudent restaurant owners should be anticipating trends, listening to consumers and delivering what they will want – preferably from Caymanian farmers. Higher margins, lower cost of goods, and longer shelf life just makes better business/kitchen sense anyway.
One could argue that atm we have other more pressing things to worry about…
A fair point. We will likely always have something that seems more pressing to us, something or several somethings that feel more present and pressing.
….. and a few more years pass by, and the various eco-cans are kicked down the road, and another election occurs, and politicians combine in a manner which is contrary to our median wishes, and life goes on and on, and the next crisis rears it’s ugly head and plastic crap washes here from Jamaica and elsewhere and we shake our heads sadly and wonder how it all got away from us.
You’re right as rain. Maybe it’s a sin of old farts like me who look back on great changes and can see all the little steps that led to them. Maybe our greatest sin is the arrogance to imagine that we are collectively capable of positively changing the future.
NAAH. There are worse sins than that. 😀