(8 Aug 2019) Two authors of a landmark U.N. report on the relationship between climate change and land say the science behind global warming is “scary” and warned that food insecurity is a growing problem.
Koko Warner, who contributed to a chapter on risk management and decision-making in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, said she had lost a lot of sleep about what the science is saying and urgent action needs to be taken.
She and two other experts on climate and conservation spoke to the Associated Press after the U.N. backed IPCC released the report at the World Meteorological Organisation’s headquarters in Geneva.
The special report, written by more than 100 scientists and unanimously approved by diplomats from nations around the world, made further warnings about the issue of global warming.
It also laid out actions that governments, farmers, and the general public can take to help battle climate change.
The scientists said if people change the way they eat and grow food it could help save the planet from a far warmer future.
Cynthia Rosenzweig, who contributed to chapter of the IPCC report on food security, said climate change is already impacting food security and extreme weather events caused by climate change are also affecting the supply chain of our food.
Earth’s land masses are warming twice as fast as the planet as a whole.
While heat-trapping gases are causing problems in the atmosphere, the land has been less talked about as part of climate change.
Global Policy Manager for WWF’s Climate and Energy Practice Fernanda Carvalho said the report touched on “everything” with regard to land and climate change, though she said the conservation group would have liked to see more of a focus on biodiversity.
The UN body dealing with climate change has issued a warning saying global food security is at risk if we do not change the way we use the planet’s resources.
In a major report on land use and climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says rising global temperatures are creating more extreme weather events, such as heatwaves and droughts, leading to land degradation and desertification.
At the same time it says poor land-use practices are contributing to global warming.
The destruction of natural habitats to make way for livestock and cultivation, is responsible for about a fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions, and is reducing the land’s capacity to store carbon.
The report’s authors are calling for a shift to sustainable land-use practices, and for action to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions.
While they have stopped short of telling people to stop eating meat they say reducing consumption will take pressure off our planet’s limited natural resources.
On January 24th 2019, Professor Kevin Anderson addressed the Oxford Climate Society on “climate’s holy trinity: how cogency, tenacity & courage could yet deliver on our Paris 2°C commitment”.
Talk abstract: It’s twenty-eight years since the IPCC’s first report and over a quarter of a century since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit – such heady days of international hope and optimism. Now, in 2019 and with the benefit of hindsight, we can look back and trace our voyage of abject failure – and with humility learn lessons for charting an alternative low-carbon course.
This lecture will begin by acknowledging our collective penchant for delusion on climate change. It will explore how academia has abdicated its responsibility to hold government to account, choosing instead to be complicit in maintaining a façade of mitigation. Revealing the growing gap between aspiration and action, it will argue that centuries of reductionist thinking and specialized disciplines leave us ill-equipped to understand system-level (‘wicked’) problems.
Building on a more candid foundation, the seminar will proceed to sketch out the unprecedented scale and timeframe of decarbonization now necessary to deliver on our Paris 2°C commitment. It will conclude by elaborating a system-level framing of the challenge, with equity at its core, and asking whether a Marshall-style policy prospectus could yet deliver on the Paris commitments.
About the speaker: Kevin Anderson has just completed two years as the Zennström professor of climate change leadership at Uppsala University, and has now returned to his position as chair of energy and climate change at the School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering (MACE) at the University of Manchester. He has previously held the roles of deputy director and director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and he is a non-executive director of Greenstone Carbon Management. Kevin is research active with publications in Science, Nature and Nature Geosciences. Kevin engages widely across all tiers of government (EU, UK and Sweden) on issues ranging from shale gas, aviation and shipping to the role of climate modeling (IAMs), carbon budgets and ‘negative emission technologies’. His analysis previously contributed to the framing of the UK’s Climate Change Act and the development of national carbon budgets. Kevin has a decade’s industrial experience, principally in the petrochemical industry. He is a chartered engineer and a fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.
