Fighting the climate crisis is cheaper than dealing with its consequences

The last big installment of the reports made by the largest group of experts in the world on climate change stresses, once again, the threat that the climate crisis poses to humanity and the need to take stronger actions to stop the advance of this global crisis. “Climate change adaptation and mitigation plans have advanced in recent years, but even so, they are still insufficient to deal with this crisis,” highlights the analysis published this Monday. “We need to close the gap between what we are doing and what we need to do to tackle climate change,” the report added.

The panel of experts that has led this latest analysis highlights that “there is enough capital” to deploy all the adaptation and mitigation measures necessary to fight the climate crisis but which there is still a need to “remove the barriers” and increase efforts to “redirect funds toward climate action.” “The benefits associated with the decarbonization of the global economy are as great or greater than the cost of inaction and, therefore, of the climatic impacts”, highlights the researcher Pep Canadellexecutive director of the Global Carbon Project in statements to the Science Media Center (SMC) after the publication of this latest report.

climate resilience

The recipe to save the planet? Experts point to the so-called resilient development. In other words, the idea that, on the one hand, it is urgent to curb the emission of greenhouse gases and, on the other hand, apply measures to adapt to the different impacts of climate change. This includes, for example, the measures focused on reducing traffic in cities since, on the one hand, they would manage to reduce the levels of air pollution in large cities and, on the other, they would help to improve people’s health. In this sense, scientists recall that “it is cheaper” implement measures to improve air quality having to deal with all the diseases and public health problems that come from breathing polluted air.

The diagnosis of the experts is clear. If we want to save the planet and its inhabitants in the face of a future of climatic extremes, it is urgent to apply “transformational changes” both on an industrial scale (in sectors such as food, energy and transport) and on a more individual scale (with changes in habits and lifestyles). All this, in the words of the Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, supposes the “Definitive guide to defusing the weather time bomb“.”It is a survival guide for humanity. This report is a wake-up call to massively accelerate the climate efforts of all countries and all sectors,” the diplomat stressed during the presentation of this report.

Roadmap

the roadmap to avoid climate catastrophe remains the same: the world must halve its emissions by 2030. Only then will it be achieved limit the global rise in temperatures below 1.5 degrees on average, the well-known safety ‘threshold’ for all forms of life that inhabit the planet. “Every tenth increase in temperature causes a rapid increase in climate hazards,” recalls the report.

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Forecasts suggest that the advancing climate crisis will lead to increasingly intense and frequent heat waves, more torrential rains and floods, and more extreme weather events in all regions of the world. All of this, in turn, could jeopardize the food security of millions of people and threaten the survival of the most vulnerable populations on the globe.

At this time it is estimated that at least half of the life forms on the planet, from humans to animals, are in a situation of “high risk” due to the advance of the climate crisis. Experts recall that this is due to runaway use of fossil fuels and the continued increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. To reverse this dynamic, the Intergovernmental Group of Experts on Climate Change recalls that we have “multiple feasible, effective and available tools now” to curb emissions and, in turn, the advance of the climate crisis. Of course, we must act now.