Governments’ action: all that’s missing as new report confirms climate crisis

Governments have been handed a firm mandate to act decisively on the climate crisis by a new report released today in Stockholm by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Nature Trust Malta said today.

The first installment on the physical science basis of the IPCC's fifth assessment report -  signed off by 110 nations after its summary was negotiated line by line in Stockholm this week - said it was more certain than ever before that human activities were responsible for climate change.   

For the first time, the IPCC gives a global budget for the total amount of carbon pollution that cannot be exceeded if we are to meet the international goal of preventing devastating levels of global warming that will occur beyond 2C. - that figure is 1 trillion tonnes.

But that the world's nations already burnt through half of this, and at the current rate, they will have exhausted the entire budget within 30 years.

With climate impacts continuing to mount in the real world, reducing carbon pollution levels quickly and dramatically was vital to stay within that threshold.

"The report confirms what ENGOs have been saying for the last decade - that the planet is heating up, sea level rise is accelerating, the rate of Arctic sea ice retreat has doubled, the melting of glaciers and ice sheets is happening faster, and the oceans are acidifying," Vincent Attard, executive president of Nature Trust Malta said. 

One of the most significant steps forward in the IPCC's first assessment report in five years is the amount of new information about how climate change will impact regions around the world.  For the Mediterranean region and thus Malta the projections are particularly grim.  

"This report shows that the science on climate change is clear. The debate about who is responsible is over. People rightly demand that governments tackle the climate risk posed to our communities and economies. Governments should use the report as the backbone of a climate plan to dramatically reduce emissions, and flick the switch to renewable energy, thereby securing a safer, fairer and happier future for the world."

"NTM urges the Maltese Government to champion again this issue and urge speedy and extensive action by Mediterranean nations in what is a currently stalled process (the Mediterranean Climate Change Initiative). Malta must also advocate ambitious EU targets for 2020 and 2030 for greenhouse gas emission reductions, renewable energy use, energy efficiency as well as for climate change aid to developing nations, including especially those in the Southern Mediterranean."

Representatives of the world's governments will go to Warsaw in November for the UN climate negotiations. The report will be critical for all countries asked by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon to bring "strong pledges" to a summit on climate action next September - ahead of the 2015 conference in France which is tasked with agreeing a global climate action plan.