Beyond the blaring alarm on the climate and ecological emergency sounds loud and clear, very little has changed. “An increase in the rate at which sea levels rise threatens a mass exodus of entire populations on a biblical scale”, warned the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres.
The climate crisis is causing sea levels to rise faster than in the last 3,000 years, bringing a “torrent of trouble” to nearly a billion people, from London to Los Angeles, and from Bangkok to Buenos Aires, Guterres said. to the UN security council.
Alert
The alarm is important: some nations could cease to exist, drowned under the waves. But the world’s agenda seems to be different. “We have been through a period of awakening, of climate alarm, and the era of denial is over. And it seems that we have entered a new phase, dominated by normalization, in which even people who know what is coming have integrated it into their expectations for the future. How do we overcome that?” asks the activist Greta Thunberg, convinced that “the world is getting darker every day”. “We are testing very complicated methods to try to avoid getting caught in these traps, they are false hope,” she concludes about the long-term talks that are being raised in organizations like the UN.
Guterres insists that carbon emissions need to be drastically reduced, problems like poverty that worsen the impact of sea level rise on communities need to be addressed, and develop new international laws to protect the homeless, and even stateless. Sea level rise is a threat multiplier that, by damaging lives, economies and infrastructure, in turn has “dramatic implications” for world peace and security, it threatened. But few listened.
Efforts to mitigate climate change drive countries around the world to adopt dramatically different policies towards industry and commerce, leading to conflicts between governments. And these new confrontations for the climate policy they are testing international alliances and the global trading system, suggesting a future in which policies aimed at avoiding environmental catastrophe could also lead to more frequent cross-border trade wars. Many Western countries, for example, complain that China subsidizes climate change spokespersons who push for regulatory changes that are not later applied to the Asian giant, making their products cheaper. A true preaching but that threatens to paralyze both sides.
Strategy
“I no longer go to United Nations conferences or whatever to try to persuade the rulers of the world, the rich people, to somehow change their minds. I don’t think they’ll hear me even if I yell. What I’m trying to do is speak to the public. I don’t think the changes we need now will come from the people in power. I think they will come from outside when enough people demand change,” adds Thunberg.
But groups like XR have already chosen not to pressure those in power or shame and inconvenience ordinary citizens about their ungreen behaviors, advocating for a “moderate flank,” a broader-based climate movement less defined by its members. more radical.
The alert is the same, two years after witnessing unprecedented forest fires that devastated a large part of the planet, now we see unprecedented storms that flooded bays in different cities. “Low communities and entire countries could disappear forever. We would witness a mass exodus of entire populations on a biblical scale. AND we would see increasingly fierce competition for fresh water, land and other resources”, Guterres insists.
migrations
The International Law Commission is evaluating the legal situation. In 2020, the UN human rights committee ruled that it was illegal for governments to return people to countries where their lives could be threatened by the climate crisis. A new compilation of data from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) shows that sea levels are rising rapidly and that the global ocean has warmed faster in the last century than at any time in the last 11,000 years.
Sea level rises as warmer water expands and the ice caps and glaciers melt. Professor Petteri Taalas, WMO Secretary-General, said: “Sea level rise poses risks to economies, livelihoods, settlements, health, well-being, food and water security, and cultural values. in the short and long term. And Guterres stressed: “Even if global warming is miraculously limited to 1.5°C, there will still be significant sea level rise.”
A sea level rise of about 50 cm is likely to occur by 2100, but the WMO anticipated that there would be an increase of 2 to 3 meters in the next 2000 years if heating were limited to 1.5 °C, and of 2 to 6 m if it were limited to 2 °C. A UN report in October said there was “no credible path to 1.5C.” Current national targets, if met, would mean a temperature rise of 2.4°C
