Climate change must be stopped now, says UN

The planet will have reached an irreversible climate disaster by 2025 if nothing is done to curb greenhouse gas emissions. This is according to the latest report by the United Nations (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The IPCC warns that greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2025 in order to limit overall global warming by close to 1.5 degrees Celsius. According to the IPCC report, “rapid and deep” cuts in greenhouse gas emissions must be made in order to reach this goal, as agreed upon in the Paris Agreement.

The report also states that even with extreme cutbacks on greenhouse gas emissions, the planet will naturally become 3.2 degrees Celsius warmer by the end of this century, and this will happen even faster if there are no changes to emissions.

António Guterres, UN secretary-general, said in an IPCC video press release that some governments and businesses are claiming to be on track for a goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius, but that is far from the truth. “Some government and business leaders are saying one thing – but doing another. Simply put, they are lying. And the results will be catastrophic,” said Guterres.

Jim Skea, a professor at Imperial College in London and co-chair of the working group for the report said in the report, “It’s now or never, if we want to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.”

For a summary of the IPCC report, watch the video below:

After the release of the report by the IPCC, more than 1000 scientists around the world took part in a worldwide protest to bring attention to the report and to put pressure on government agencies to start implementing changes before it is too late.

According to a news report from The Business Insider, many of these scientists were arrested, including Peter Kalmus, a biological systems and climate change scientist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and three other scientists who chained themselves to the J.P. Morgan bank on 6 April 2022 in Los Angeles, California.

The protests were organised by Scientist Rebellion, the scientific branch of the climate change activist group Extinction Rebellion.

Professor Dewald van Niekerk, North-West University (NWU) professor in geography and the head of the African Centre for Disaster Studies (ACDS), believes that people must take the IPCC report and the scientists who protested seriously because it is all based on scientifically proven facts. Van Niekerk said that the biggest problem is that world leaders have not been taking climate change as seriously as they should have and therefore there is a crisis.

“We can lay the blame squarely in front of the feet of our politicians and the people in decision making because they failed us,” said Van Niekerk.

According to Van Niekerk, a community like Potchefstroom can help contribute to change through political pressure. Van Niekerk said that society must place pressure on the government through protests on a massive scale and simply demand change from our government.

Van Niekerk said South Africans have been only accepting of what the government has done and have been “turning a blind eye”.

“South Africans have found themselves in paralysis. It is as if we don’t believe we can make a difference,” said Van Niekerk.

Van Niekerk also said that there are still things people can do on a local scale, such as recycling or starting to cycle, but even these types of things will not be possible unless the local municipality provides the infrastructure. “This comes back to my first point, which is, we need to establish a demand for change and not only us in Potch, but we need to be doing this on a much bigger scale,” said Van Niekerk.