Hoesung Lee (IPCC): Exceeding 1.5 degrees may bring irreversible impacts

If in 2100 the world has increased its temperature by more than 1.5º C, it could correct it and return to the considered safety threshold but, even if it succeeds, the danger is that there will be “irreversible impacts,” warned in an interview with EFE the president of the IPCC, economist Hoesung Lee.

Greenhouse gas emissions produced by human activity lead the planet to increase its average temperature by about 3º C above pre-industrial levels, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of the UN, which warns that this warming would lead humanity to the kind of world it does not want to have.

Lee, who traveled to Sharm el Sheikh to attend the United Nations climate summit (COP27), where nations agree on how to deal with global warming – in order to contain the temperature increase below one and a half degrees – recalled that, to avoid that overheated planet, less habitable, a “very rapid and immediate” reduction in carbon emissions is needed.

“The impact of local warming spreads very quickly through all regions and, of course, through all sectors,” warned the Korean expert, to express the urgency of starting “as soon as possible” to reduce emissions and achieve carbon neutrality in 2050, which “will give the opportunity” not to exceed 1.5º C.

If this limit is exceeded, climate scientists fear that the so-called “tipping points” – which, once exceeded, would lead the world to the worst consequences of the climate crisis, with hardly any margin to stop the inertia of warming – could be unleashed, phenomena that the IPCC reports recognize, but without delving too deeply into them.

According to Lee, this is because it is an area in which more and more research is being carried out, as there is a good chance that we are approaching “points of no return”, but there is a lack of precise knowledge “about how many there are” and what we are approaching.

On what there is certainty, stressed the head of this group that brings together hundreds of climate experts from around the world, is about the threshold that the climate system has – the famous degree and a half – before becoming “something very different” from what is known.

While Lee clarified that, even exceeding that safe limit by the end of the century, warming could be reversed to return to 1.5ºC, the concern of the scientific community is that there will probably be “irreversible impacts”.

At a time when well-known climate scientists are publicly expressing their “frustration” over political inaction to contain warming – as expressed by several members of the scientific community at COP27 – the IPCC chief said he was satisfied with the way his reports have influenced international climate cooperation.

“Policymakers realize that we don’t have much time to act. So there’s a consensus to, I think, take immediate action. The question is whether we can make it a feasible implementation,” he said.

The economist advocated setting a price for carbon emissions, which only applies to “25% of global emissions”, so “that regime has to expand more and at the same time the price that is put on emissions has to increase”.

“Financing is the key and, as our report indicated, there is a clear gap between what is needed and what is available,” added Lee, who clarified that the problem is not lacking capital, because there is “sufficient liquidity and capital available.”

Rather, he said, “it’s a matter of priorities.”

Source: SwissInfo