The IPCC’s Latest Assessment Report On the Climate Crisis – Five ‘Take-Home’ Messages for South Africa

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Report Six Working Group I report was released last week and has been described as a ‘code red’ for humanity. The report makes it clear that climate change is widespread, rapid, intensifying and unprecedented in thousands of years. The requirement for climate stabilisation is immediate, strong, and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Here we examine the report through a southern African lens, and as two South African lead authors of the report, identify five messages key to the southern African region and its people.

Francois Engelbrecht (Wits Global Change Institute) and Pedro Monteiro (CSIR SOCCO)

We are close to exceeding dangerous thresholds of global warming

Humanity’s delay in taking strong climate change action, that is, in drastically reducing greenhouse gas emissions, means that dangerous thresholds of global warming may soon be exceeded. The report gives as the best estimate value of global warming to date the value of 1.1°C — precariously close to the thresholds of 1.5°C and 2°C that define “dangerous climate change”.

Note in this regard, that the “Long Term Global Goal” of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change is to restrict global warming to values well below 2°C…

By Daily Maverick.