State of the Earth Study | “We are on the brink of an irreversible climate catastrophe”

(Montreal) A report released Tuesday by around fifteen eminent climatologists indicates that 25 of the 35 indicators used to monitor the planet’s climate risks, from ocean temperatures to the loss of forest cover, are reaching record levels.

The scientists who wrote the report published in the journal BioScience have clearly not given themselves the mandate to give hope to people who suffer from ecoanxiety.

Their brutal observation is summed up in the first four sentences of the report.

“We are on the brink of an irreversible climate catastrophe. There is no doubt that this is a global emergency. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is in peril. We are entering a new critical and unpredictable phase of the climate crisis. »

“The urgency”, in the tone and words used by the authors, “surprised me a little”, but “it is justified”, reacted McGill University professor Eric Galbraith after reading the article.

“When we look at the data, we are really in a state of emergency and global society is not at all reacting as necessary to avoid a truly problematic future,” summarized the person who teaches at the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.

Red indicators

The report, “The 2024 state of the climate report: Perilous times on planet Earth,” notes that 25 of the 35 “vital signs” that climate scientists use to judge the state of the planet are at record levels.

Ocean temperature, Earth surface temperature, ocean acidity, ocean ice mass, total fossil fuel consumption, meat production per person, forest cover loss, percentage of extremely hot days in a year, are examples of what the report’s authors call indicators and “vital signs” that are reaching record levels.

“As scientists and academics, we believe it is our moral duty and that of our institutions to alert humanity as clearly as possible to the growing threats we face and to demonstrate leadership in responding to them. cope,” we read in the report.

Of human suffering

The report’s authors compiled a list of deadly events in the past year, which could be “at least partly linked to climate change.”

In February 2024, wildfires in Chile killed 131 people and destroyed 14,000 residences. In the spring of 2024 in East Africa, torrential rains killed hundreds of people, while in Burma, at the same time, 1,500 people died due to extreme heat. These are just a few examples cited in the report, which states that “climate change has already displaced millions of people, with the potential to displace hundreds of millions, if not billions. This would likely lead to greater geopolitical instability or even partial societal collapse. »

Tarifer le carbone

Rapidly reducing the use of fossil fuels “should be a top priority,” the report says.

“This could be accomplished in part through a sufficiently high global carbon price that could limit the emissions of the wealthy while potentially providing financing for much-needed climate change mitigation and adaptation programs,” according to the authors.

“A price on carbon, coordinated on a global scale,” would indeed be “what would help us the most” in reducing emissions, Professor Eric Galbraith told The Canadian Press.

But such a mechanism, like a carbon tax, has no direct effect on the climate of the country that applies it, because greenhouse gases know no borders.

This is what makes the application of pricing “very difficult” at the political level, according to Professor Galbraith, because it is complicated to convince a nation to do things “that are for the well-being of the whole world”.

“We need to put a price on carbon,” but “we also need to make green energy more affordable,” which seems “easier to achieve,” added Peter Douglas, also a professor at McGill University.

The professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences noted that one of the only encouraging aspects of the report is “that the use of renewable energy is increasing rapidly, faster than many people would expect.” wait 10 years ago.”

Even though renewable energy is growing, consumption of fossil fuels continues to be 14 times higher than that of wind and solar energy, note the report’s authors.

Fourteen researchers participated in the writing of the document “The 2024 state of the climate report: Perilous times on planet Earth”.

University of Oregon Professor Emeritus William Ripple, a biologist and ecologist, led this collaboration.