Cape Town - As the world's climate and ecological crises continue to worsen, activists and climate change experts are raising red flags as the existential threats of global warming continue to be witnessed in the rise of unfolding climate catastrophe.
The need for civilians and the government to take a precautionary approach comes after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a new climate change report warning that “rapid and deep” cuts to greenhouse gas emissions are needed to stay at or below the targeted 1.5ºC of global warming.
The 3 000-page report stated that without strengthening climate policies, greenhouse gas emissions are projected to lead to a median global warming of about 3.2ºC by 2100.
Director of the African Climate & Development Initiative (ACDI) at UCT, Mark New, mentioned that, given this, reducing emissions of greenhouse gases is the only way further dangerous levels of climate change can be avoided, as available data show that heavy rainfall has increased, as well as extremely hot days and nights, making these trends consistent with what climate models suggest will happen in the future as global warming increases.
“The KZN flooding is a symptom of a ‘climate emergency’. The heavy rainfall that was the initial driver of the floods was a very rare event, and we know that the historical trends in the region have been towards heavier rainfall. Some of the key other direct impacts of climate change include drought – for example the Cape Town day zero drought – where we have seen that the likelihood of a drought of that magnitude is three times higher today than it would have been in a world without climate change. Heatwaves and heat stress, with serious impacts on livestock and human health, have also increased due to climate change, and will continue to increase in the future.
“The available data show that heavy rainfall has increased, as well as extremely hot days and nights, and heatwaves. The classic way to think about vulnerability is its different components: hazard (e.g. heavy rainfall), exposure and sensitivity. Exposure – are you in the path of the hazard? For flooding, these will be low-lying areas, and in many urban areas in southern Africa, it is the poorest communities, generally informal settlements, which are in these areas.
“When we speak of sensitivity – if the hazard arrives, are you more or less likely to be severely affected? Again, multiple factors intersect here; however, the most disadvantaged are more sensitive to the catastrophes that occur. For example, a poor country with a weak national met service may not provide adequate early warning, so people have less time to prepare, infrastructure in poorer countries is often less well maintained and so more prone to failure, and people in informal settlements tend to have houses that are easy to wash away as the house is poorly constructed,” said New.
Cassi Goodman from Extinction Rebellion said that the climate change literacy of South Africans is very low and this is especially worrying since South Africa is the largest emitter of CO2 in Africa.
“As the latest IPCC reports have shown, we need urgent action now across all sectors to drastically cut our carbon emissions, and to all work together to mitigate, and adapt to, the effects of the unfolding climate catastrophe.
“When you start looking at stories through the lens of the climate and ecological crisis, you will quickly see how things are interconnected, from the recent floods in KZN, the severe drought in many parts of the country, increasing wildfires, failing crops, locust plagues, disappearing fish stocks, starving seals, etc. Even reports of a giant squid washing up on a beach should be investigated for links to warming seas and other changes in the oceans caused by climate change.
“While personal lifestyle changes are a part of the picture, it has gone way beyond changing your light bulbs and recycling your jam jars. Only our government has the power to make the large-scale changes required to urgently and drastically cut down our carbon emissions in line with the pledges that we made at climate conferences like COP26. While our politicians are saying all the right things, these are just empty promises and outright lies since they are still, for example, giving out new gas exploration licences for fossil fuel drilling along our coast,” said Goodman.
On the GHG emissions side, New added that the country needs to make a fair contribution to reducing global emissions overall as the current promises that the country has made fall a little short of this.
“There needs to be a more coherent approach to delivering on those promises, which inevitably mean weaning our economy of coal as soon as possible, and soon after that oil and gas.
“With regard to reducing the impacts and building resilience to climate extreme events, climate resilience needs to become part and parcel of development across scales; avoid development that has high climate risk and choose development options that are less sensitive to climate,” said New.
Weekend Argus