IPCC report: three things you need to know

The lat­est IPCC report, pub­lished on 4 April 2022 ¹, is a sum­ma­ry of the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion of glob­al warm­ing, with the par­tic­u­lar­i­ty of propos­ing solu­tions to com­bat this phe­nom­e­non. All these rec­om­men­da­tions, togeth­er with esti­mates and sce­nar­ios for the best ways to imple­ment them, are pre­sent­ed as the path­way to avoid sce­nar­ios where glob­al tem­per­a­tures rise above 1.5°C – as described in the first report of this series, pub­lished in August 2021 ². The con­clu­sion is that we can still act, but we must do so now. Indeed, it shows that with­out imme­di­ate and mas­sive reduc­tions in green­house gas emis­sions, it will be impos­si­ble to keep glob­al warm­ing below 2°C.

“Glob­al tem­per­a­ture will sta­bilise when car­bon diox­ide emis­sions reach net zero,” explains Philippe Drobin­s­ki, pro­fes­sor of cli­mate sci­ence and direc­tor of the Lab­o­ra­toire de Météorolo­gie Dynamique and the Energie4Climate cen­tre at Insti­tut Poly­tech­nique de Paris. “For a warm­ing thresh­old of 1.5°C, this objec­tive for car­bon neu­tral­i­ty must be reached by the ear­ly 2050s. Lim­it­ing warm­ing to around 2°C requires that glob­al green­house gas emis­sions peak by 2025 at the lat­est, reduced by a quar­ter by 2030 and reach net zero car­bon diox­ide emis­sions world­wide by the ear­ly 2070s.”

Patri­cia Cri­fo, pro­fes­sor of eco­nom­ics at École Poly­tech­nique and deputy direc­tor of the Energy4Climate cen­tre (IP Paris), says we can still act. “We often read that there is a cli­mate iner­tia of sev­er­al decades, and that efforts to reduce green­house gas emis­sions will some­how be futile in the short to medi­um term,” she says. “While many of the changes caused by past and future green­house gas emis­sions are indeed irre­versible (notably impacts on the ocean, ice caps and glob­al sea lev­els), the report points out that if we cut emis­sions sharply soon, we will see effects on air qual­i­ty with­in a few years, on glob­al sur­face tem­per­a­ture with­in about 20 years, and on many oth­er cli­mate impact fac­tors in the longer term. So, we can influ­ence our cli­mate future and every action counts.”

The tar­get, agreed in the Paris Agree­ment in 2015, still seems achiev­able, but requires a rad­i­cal reduc­tion in our GHG emis­sions, across all sec­tors – whilst bear­ing in mind that the impacts of var­i­ous sec­tors dif­fer in their emis­sions. This is the case for the agri­cul­ture, forestry, and oth­er land use (AFOLU) sec­tor, which accounts for 23% of glob­al GHG emis­sions with a total of 12 GtCO2 equivalent/year ⁴. How­ev­er, despite the large-scale emis­sion reduc­tions, as well as their enhanced soil absorp­tion, the sec­tor could achieve, the IPCC remains sto­ic. In the report we find, “[these large-scale reduc­tions] can­not ful­ly com­pen­sate for delayed actions in oth­er sectors”.

“Lim­it­ing glob­al warm­ing requires major tran­si­tions in the ener­gy sec­tor, involv­ing sub­stan­tial reduc­tions in fos­sil fuel use, wide­spread elec­tri­fi­ca­tion, improved ener­gy effi­cien­cy and the use of alter­na­tive fuels,” says Philippe Drobin­s­ki. “Since the 5^th IPCC report, the costs of solar, wind and bat­tery pow­er have fall­en. A grow­ing range of poli­cies and laws have improved ener­gy effi­cien­cy, reduced defor­esta­tion rates, and accel­er­at­ed the deploy­ment of renew­able energy.”

The report points to the sig­nif­i­cant poten­tial for reduc­ing emis­sions from cities through reduced ener­gy con­sump­tion, elec­tri­fi­ca­tion of trans­port in com­bi­na­tion with low-emis­sion ener­gy sources and improved car­bon absorp­tion and stor­age using nature. Reduc­ing emis­sions in indus­try means using mate­ri­als more effi­cient­ly, reusing and recy­cling prod­ucts and reduc­ing waste. This must be accom­pa­nied by new pro­duc­tion process­es, low or zero emis­sion elec­tric­i­ty, hydro­gen and, where nec­es­sary, car­bon cap­ture and storage. 

He adds, “accel­er­at­ed and equi­table cli­mate action to mit­i­gate and adapt to the impacts of cli­mate change is essen­tial for sus­tain­able devel­op­ment. The options pro­posed would ben­e­fit bio­di­ver­si­ty, cli­mate change adap­ta­tion and secure liveli­hoods. Some can absorb and store car­bon and, at the same time, help com­mu­ni­ties to lim­it the impacts asso­ci­at­ed with cli­mate change.”

Anoth­er angle pro­posed by the IPCC is reduc­tion in demand. To reduce our envi­ron­men­tal impacts, pro­duc­tion should no longer be based on quan­ti­ty, but only on what is need­ed. This includes changes in infra­struc­ture use, adop­tion of end-use tech­nolo­gies, as well as socio-cul­tur­al and behav­iour­al changes. Accord­ing to the IPCC, these “demand-side mea­sures, tak­en or to be tak­en, can reduce glob­al GHG emis­sions in the end-use sec­tors by 40–70% by 2050 com­pared to the ref­er­ence scenarios.”

Julie May­er, assis­tant pro­fes­sor at École Poly­tech­nique and researcher at I3-CRG (IP Paris), con­ducts research on the organ­i­sa­tion­al trans­for­ma­tions under­ly­ing the ener­gy and eco­log­i­cal tran­si­tion. She explains that “this is the first time that an IPCC report has giv­en so much space to the issue of sobri­ety. This shows that this con­cept is becom­ing essen­tial in the fight against glob­al warm­ing, and rein­forces its legitimacy.”

Through the term “ener­gy con­ser­va­tion”, the IPCC places sobri­ety as one of the levers of action to be under­tak­en. “This notion of sobri­ety con­cerns what indi­vid­u­als can change in their lifestyle, in dif­fer­ent areas, in order to reduce their dai­ly con­sump­tion. This can be done by lim­it­ing the use of elec­tron­ic devices, trans­port, or even by chang­ing one’s diet, with less meat, or more local consumption.”

“The IPCC report high­lights two key points of atten­tion: first­ly, that sobri­ety can­not be focused on indi­vid­ual behav­iour. Indeed, how can an indi­vid­ual be expect­ed to become sober if the sys­tem in which he or she lives is not? Sec­ond­ly, the report points out that efforts to reduce con­sump­tion, aim­ing at a sus­tain­able and fair tran­si­tion, will prob­a­bly not be the same from one pop­u­la­tion to anoth­er: mul­ti­ple fac­tors, such as the lev­el of wealth, must be tak­en into account.”

In gen­er­al, the IPCC experts, and more broad­ly the aca­d­e­mics who work on this notion of sobri­ety in var­i­ous dis­ci­plines, point to the need for a struc­tur­al and cul­tur­al change. “It is here”, she says, “that the social sci­ences have a very spe­cial role to play: the changes in behav­iour and lifestyles high­light­ed in the report raise a soci­o­log­i­cal, eth­i­cal, polit­i­cal and even philo­soph­i­cal ques­tion for which it is dif­fi­cult to envis­age a uni­ver­sal and objec­tive answer: what is just enough?”

Pablo Andres