Amid rise in global temperatures, climate crisis gains urgency

THE heatwave hitting the world from Europe and the US to Africa and Asia is setting historical records and wreaking devastation. Just last week, a township in Xinjiang, China recorded a temperature of over 52 deg C. In India, a heatwave in two states hospitalised hundreds and killed around 170. Swathes of the US are grappling with searing heat. In Spain, land temperature hit 60 deg C. Singapore’s temperature soared to 37 deg C in May, matching a 40-year record.

Just this month, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) declared the onset of El Nino for the first time in seven years, and warned of a surge in global temperatures and climate patterns. El Nino, it said, is expected to be “at least of moderate strength”, and is likely to break temperature records, “triggering more extreme heat in many parts of the world and in the ocean”. It urged governments to take measures to mitigate the impacts on health, ecosystems and economies.

The warnings have come none too soon. Extreme heat is symptomatic of the human-induced climate crisis; this year’s experience is perhaps the most severe and synchronised by far. Unfettered burning of fossil fuels causes heat to be trapped in the atmosphere, upsetting Earth’s balance and unleashing threats in the forms of drought, wildfires, severe rainfall and floods, among others.

Extreme heat is not only a threat to populations, but also to ecosystems. Limited water availability is expected to sap the world’s “carbon sinks”, which refer to natural systems that absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, including grassland and forests.

Efforts to roll back carbon emissions are long in the making, and unevenly paced.

But even with widespread awareness and the marshalling of private capital, the world is still not moving rapidly enough. The landmark Paris Agreement in 2015, signed by 196 countries, called for a limit of a global temperature rise of 1.5 deg C above pre-industrial levels. But in May, the WMO warned that the annual average global temperature from now to 2027 will temporarily be more than 1.5 deg C above pre-industrial levels for at least a year.

Energy transition at scale is still a formidable hurdle. While there has been progress on the development of clean energy, the “equity” aspect has lagged, based on the World Economic Forum’s Energy Transition Index (ETI).

Equity is defined as “just, affordable access to energy and sustained economic development”. ETI found that the global energy transition plateaued in the past three years, amid the energy crisis and geopolitical tensions. At the current pace, the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal of access to affordable, reliable and sustainable energy by 2030 will not be attained.

But by far the most pressing need remains access to climate finance, particularly for the poorest countries who suffer the worst impacts and are saddled with high-interest debt.

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The recently concluded climate finance summit in Paris made progress on some fronts, but little in the way of action. The summit acknowledged that richer countries may need to provide funds to multilateral development institutions like the World Bank. And these institutions could unlock as much as US$200 billion by “optimising” their balance sheets and taking more risk. But until world leaders address the issue of debt and debt relief, an equitable transition may well prove elusive.