IPCC Report 2021: Climate change is very real

Humans are the leading reason for environmental degradation but, ironically, human-centric actions can be the best solutions

Several of Bihar’s 38 districts are flood-hit — people have lost lives, homes continue to get damaged, and countless agricultural fields have been inundated. In Africa, heavy rains ravaged the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Uganda, and Ethiopia. After being hit by a dual disaster — an earthquake and hurricane Grace — Haiti’s health system is severely strained, as are the rescue teams still hunting for survivors. In the U.S., a total of 41,122 wildfires have burned more than 4.59 million acres. One might think these disasters have been recorded over a long period, but unfortunately these are just a fraction of many natural calamities reported in one week of August alone. Besides, all this is occurring when the world is already grappling with a pandemic. These are numbing data, as numbing as the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s Sixth Assessment Report. The report estimates that the world will probably reach or exceed 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) of warming within just the next two decades. What it also highlights is the current state of the climate: atmospheric concentrations of a range of greenhouse gases are increasing, the water cycle is assessed to be intensifying, frozen parts of the globe are melting, and the oceans are warming up, to list a few indicators. While these findings no doubt give us a sense of impending doom, they come at an important time in human history, a time when environmental consciousness is at an all-time high. Sadly, though, many governments continue to brush environmental concerns under the carpet. That is why the Report’s third chapter — ‘Human influence on the climate system’ — caught my eye and should be a must-read for everyone. Direct and to-the-point, it charts how our actions over the years have led to where the environment is today. It finds that human-induced greenhouse gas emissions are the main driver of the observed changes in hot and cold extremes on the global scale (virtually certain) and on most continents (very likely)’. It adds that these temperature changes are further ‘amplified at the regional scale by regional processes such as soil moisture or snow/ice-albedo feedbacks, land use and land-cover changes, or aerosol concentrations, etc.’ It estimates irrigation and crop expansion to have increased summer temperatures in some regions such as the U.S. Midwest (medium confidence). And, importantly, urbanisation appears to have furthered temperature extremes in cities.