International cooperation on environmental issues has led to demonstrable results on the global scale. One of the best examples, and directly relevant to the issue of climate change, is the handling in the 1970’s and 80’s of acid rain, the product of sulfur dioxide (SO2) emitted from smokestacks which made rain droplets acidic. This acidified water destroyed forests, killed fish populations and damaged buildings (particularly old and ancient) around the world. The 1979 Long-Range Transboundary Air-Pollution(LRTAP) addressed this and related problems, which states parties (including the United States and much of Europe) then remediated, dramatically reducing the problem.
All illustrations from the IPCC 6th Assessment Report, Vol. 3, Chap. 14. Framework of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.
Another issue from that time was ozone depletion due to chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which was addressed in the 1988 Vienna Conventionfor the Protection of the Ozone Layer. The treaty came into force only in 2009 but by that time the main actors had long since enacted laws eliminating manufacture of CFCs. The ozone hole in the Antarctic still exists and is monitored by NASA, but is no longer the growing threat it was a generation and a half ago. These are two urgent environmental problems which scientific monitoring, international cooperation and governmental action had direct hands in solving. Global warming can and should be different only in that public and private sectors must cooperate, because of the vastly greater scale of the climate change crisis.
Emissions cuts required by governmental action and cooperation for 1 . 5°C and 2 . 0°C global warming targets, respectively.
Since the IPCC’s 2014 publication of its Fifth Assessment Report, the governments of the world have set up the 2015 Paris Agreement, which enjoins the parties (192 countries plus the European Union as a bloc) to set voluntary emissions targets with the goal of limiting global temperature rise to within 1.5°C/2.7°F of 1750 (pre-industrial) levels. The unfortunate truth is that the planet is currently on track for at least 2.0°C/3.6°F increase and, if nothing is done, more than 3.0°C/5.4°F. Any chance of lowering this, or at least preventing still worse levels of warming, will require concerted governmental action around the world.
The urgency has become so extreme, with many countries
estimated to be badly lacking (or making no effort at all) that scientists and policy makers are now calling for the IPCC to research
and publish a report on the potential extreme consequences of 3+°C/5.4+°F
temperature rise, as a last-ditch effort to scare the collective public into realizing
the scope and immediacy of the climate threat and make the needed efforts by governmental,
societal and economic means to lower emissions.
Tomorrow: innovation and technology development and transfer
Be brave, be steadfast, and be well.
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