Today, Explained - “Code red for humanity”

Episode Date: August 11, 2021

A new UN report says humans are “unequivocally” causing climate change. Rich countries are to blame, but poorer ones, like Madagascar, are paying the price with an unprecedented climate-induced famine.  Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. It's Today Explained. I'm Sean Ramos from Nothing Starts the Week Off Better Than a Damning Climate Report, and the United Nations did not disappoint on Monday. Climate change is here and now. We're already seeing the effects of our warming planet on changes in extreme weather and rising sea levels and coral reefs bleaching and dying around the

world. Umair Irfan, Science Fox, it's hard to ignore how climate change is altering the planet right now. Did we need another report? Well, it's the first report of this kind in eight years. And these reports are pretty consequential because they're very comprehensive. And this is some of the strongest language we've ever seen. For example, they say that... It is unequivocal that human activities are responsible for climate change. That's the finding of a new study by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel

on Climate Change. And that widespread and rapid changes are already occurring in every inhabited region across the planet. So this is something that's pretty stunning to see a scientific body putting this in such stark and clear terms. It is becoming more confident in the relationships that we expect around climate change. It's not just likely anymore. It's extremely likely or unequivocal that the greenhouse gases we emit from burning fossil fuels are contributing to things like extreme weather. And we can start teasing out those specific signals. And because of the improvements we've made in science over the last eight years, better computer models, better observations, better understanding of the paleoclimate,

scientists now say that they have much more confidence in these findings. And they can even zoom in into individual regions across the planet. And they can even give a good indication of how climate change will play out in the coming century. And what's the paleoclimate? The paleoclimate is the history of how the planet's climate has been shifting over time. So this is in the early human era. Even prior to that, we're talking tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of years. So one of the findings that they reported in this new installment of the report is that the concentrations of carbon dioxide

in the atmosphere that we just achieved this year, about 419 parts per million, that's a record that we haven't seen on this planet in about 2 million years. Woof. And so that means that the planet was in a very different situation the last time we saw these levels of greenhouse gases.

You know, the sea levels were much higher. The continents were in slightly different places. Humanity had not developed civilization, but basically, it was a much more different world than the one that we as humans have come up in. And this is just another confirmation that this is all our fault? That's right. One of the more significant and different things about this report is they focus a great deal on attribution. Basically, not just that the humans are changing the climate, but like those changes in the climate

are now starting to play out in individual events. So for a long time, scientists were somewhat reluctant to talk about how human actions are contributing to individual events like flooding and heat waves. But now that they've had this period of time with more research and better computer models, they can actually tease out the human influence. They can say that, for instance, the recent heat waves that we've seen this summer across the United States

would be virtually impossible in a world where humans did not warm the planet. Or similarly, they can look at things like coastal flooding and say that because of sea level rise, we saw much more inundation than we would have in a world without sea level rise. And so by teasing out those specific signals, we can basically backtrace it to, you know, human emissions of greenhouse gases and show exactly how we're making these kinds of events worse. So this doesn't bode well for humanity? Is it like Sufjan said, we're just all going to die? I mean, there's hope, but, you know, we can't just rest on hope. You know, the scenarios that they chalked out in this report, there were five pathways that they talk about where humans emit greenhouse gases.

In all five of those pathways, humans are going to overshoot the 1.5 degree Celsius target that was set out in the Paris Climate Agreement. An enduring agreement that reduces global carbon pollution and sets the world on a course to a low carbon future. The Paris Climate Agreement has two targets. One is two degrees. That's like the main threshold. And then it has sort of a reach target of 1.5 degrees Celsius. And right now, every scenario will get us above the 1.5 C. In the lowest scenario where we basically zero out our contributions to climate change by 2050, the climate will eventually cool back down to below 1.5 C. But basically, it just shows that it's going to be

really, really hard. We're not going to get lucky and have the planet not warm. Basically, we can't just hope our way into a future where the consequences of climate change will not affect us. Where does that leave the Paris Climate Agreement? Is it like null and void at this point? It's not null and void. It's right now the best international framework for dealing with climate change. And I think there is a lot of skepticism around it. You know, since the Paris Climate Agreement was put together in 2015, you know, greenhouse gas emissions have only gone up.

Remember, the agreement aims to stop global temperatures from rising two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, ideally one and a half degrees. But average global temperatures are right now, as I speak, at 1.1 degrees and climbing. And the impacts of a warming world, they're already shocking. And, you know, even with this lull in emissions that we saw with the COVID-19 pandemic, the planet is still reaching record high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. So, yeah, a lot of folks are, you know, reasonably and rightfully skeptical that

world leaders are taking this seriously. Climate researchers at the London School of Economics found six countries, the United States, Argentina, Australia, Canada, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, are failing to enact sufficient legislation to meet their emissions targets. On the other hand, though, with a report like this that is laying out the impacts of climate change in such stark terms, there is the expectation that world leaders will go back to the drawing board and come back with more ambitious targets. You're talking about things that are going to happen in 2030 and 40 and 50 and potentially for the rest of our time here on this planet. But right now, Spain is on fire. California is on fire. Germany's flooding. China's flooding. I believe in Madagascar, we have the first ever famine that we know has been caused by climate change. What the heck are we supposed to do now? I mean, that is sort of beyond the scope of this report and deliberately so. You know, the scientists that put this together,

they want to stay apolitical and they specifically say that this report is meant to be relevant to policy, but they don't want to prescribe policy. They don't want to tell people exactly what to do. But when you look at a report like this, it's hard to draw any other conclusion than we need to drastically reduce our greenhouse gas emissions starting right now if we want to avoid the situation we're in getting worse. And we is a fraught pronoun here because a lot of people are going to suffer who had nothing to do with getting us here. The fundamental injustice of climate change is that the people who contributed least to the problem stand to suffer the most. And that has been a thorn in every climate negotiation that we've had, you know, since Kyoto and Copenhagen and all the other big international meetings. The question is, you know, what do rich

and wealthy countries that did most of the emitting owe to the poorer countries that are suffering from climate change? You know, the island nations that are seeing sea level rise and literally seeing their land being eroded. What about the countries that, you know, don't have much in the way of fossil fuels, but are seeing drought and extreme weather and are being hit by these devastating storms and don't have the resources to cope with it. Now, under the Paris Climate Agreement, sort of as an addition to it, you know, there is a mechanism for wealthy countries to help distribute funds to countries that are developing. You know, there's like United Nations Green Climate Fund. We're counting on the GCF to do more than just deliver funds to developing countries. More than that, we need the GCF to also enable countries to build up

their own technical capacity, unlock new capital, drive technological change, and shift the world into alignment with the Paris Agreement's goals. There's also mechanisms for offsets that can help preserve forests and other kinds of ecosystems in developing countries and give them money to preserve nature rather than trying to exploit it. But they're very far short of their funding targets and even the targets that they have in place are pretty weak to begin with. So there's a lot of ground to be made up here. Does this report basically say that there are, you know, victims and perpetrators of climate change? The report doesn't say that specifically.

And the language in the report had to be voted on by representatives from 195 countries. So it tends to be a little bit tempered in those statements. But again, that's a conclusion that you can very reasonably reach from this because the report does show that greenhouse gas emissions are contributing to many of the disasters we're seeing today and are causing the warming that we're going to be seeing over the coming century. So it's very reasonable to presume that, you know, the countries that did the most emissions are the most responsible. The question then is, how do you hold them accountable for that? But this definitely opens the door to that kind of claim, and it will be interesting to see how that shapes out. In a minute, we traveled to Madagascar to hear how a country that had little to nothing to do with causing climate change is being devastated by it. Thank you. Aura. Aura believes that sharing pictures is a great way to keep up with family. And Aura says it's never been easier thanks to their digital picture frames.

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please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. One of the most biodiverse places on the planet is an island nation off the coast of East Africa. Your favorite kids might be obsessed with it thanks to some anthropomorphic animated movies. In Madagascar, there actually aren't any penguins or lions,

but it is a beautiful, amazing country with beaches and forests. It's an enormous island that spans the distance, which would be the equivalent of going from the Canadian border all the way to Florida. And Madagascar has an amazing biodiversity. For example, there are 350 frogs, 101 lemurs. And it's different depending on where you are. The north of Madagascar, central areas,

is very green and lush with forests. And then in the deep south, it's really dry and desert-like. This desert wasteland in southern Madagascar was once arable and fertile but years of drought mean only a few patches of green remain. This year the south of Madagascar is really in crisis. Food, seeds, children who are malnourished. One million people are suffering and really need support. In the morning, I prepare this plate of insects because we have nothing else to eat and no rain to allow us to harvest what we have sown. So Madagascar is different than some of the other countries

that experience food insecurity like Yemen and Ethiopia. Madagascar that causes not conflict or political issues. The problem in Madagascar is really about climate-related issues like no rainfall, unpredictable rain. So farmers don't know when to plant. And people in the south of Madagascar are subsistence farmers, so they rely on rain to make sure their crops grow. Tanya, you're on the ground there in Madagascar's capital, Antananarivo, with Catholic Relief Services. This famine is the first of its kind, one we know was caused by global warming. And we know that even though this region is typically dry? The South is known for being very dry.

And this has been going on for over a decade. But this year has been much worse. So a much longer period of time where people don't have food, a lot more people who are going to bed hungry. So the amount of time where people are suffering and the extent to which people are suffering is much more. I've been working in Madagascar for over four years, and I've been going to the South regularly. And this year, visiting the South, I was even more struck and saddened by what's happening. People are digging for yams. It's now nearly two years since we had a harvest. All we can do is search for edible roots. But fortunately, since it rained, the crickets

hatched, and that has saved us. People are walking 15, 20 miles to find cactus fruit to sell and eat. People are not eating at night, missing meals, eating less, migrating. As the situation becomes unbearable, thousands are fleeing to more hospitable regions. Climate migration has skyrocketed in just a few months. We collect data every month from the same participants in the South to better understand trends in the South. And in November of last year,

we saw the number of people who sold assets were five times from last year. And now we're not seeing this, probably because they don't have much left to sell. We sold our land for just 20 euros, even though it was huge. After we'd spent it all, we left. We didn't have anything to eat. That's how we ended up here.

I saw people complaining about, you know, constantly being hungry. I met this man named Bobelo who sold everything he had and showed me his clothes and said, this is all I have left. I've sold my kitchen items. I've sold my clothes. What I'm wearing is what I'm left with. I'm going out to eat cactus fruit and very little else. I met a woman, Vili Su, who walked for a whole week with her whole family, her whole community, to try to find something to make ends meet and survive. She had one child who was very thin, who had bilharzia, and they're trying to figure out how to survive.

Families were selling water, so like one jerry can, 20 liters of water, making five cents profit on it, and only able to sell a few jerry cans of water a day Madagascar has the fifth highest rate of stunting in the world for children under the age of five but in the south where we're more concerned about acute malnutrition. And in some areas, we're seeing one in three children with acute malnutrition. You know, these are well beyond emergency levels of malnutrition. So currently, Catholic Relief Services is treating about 25,000 malnourished children this year.

That's a lot of children. What is the government in Madagascar doing about this crisis right now? The government of Madagascar is playing a large active role, but more in terms of coordination and planning. They just don't have the funding available to support the needs in the south of Madagascar. So Madagascar is relying on mostly humanitarian assistance, and there are a number of organizations responding. CRS, the World Food Program, and a number of donors. USAID is providing an enormous amount of money for the needs in the South. There's also the World Bank. So there's definitely money and support coming. It's not enough. And we worry that some of the assistance will come late or that it'll dry up because the south of Madagascar really needs long-term support.

The emergency support is definitely needed, but it won't stop the problem. What we need is investments that will improve education, that will improve the health system, that will help farmers adapt and start using climate smart techniques. So there really is a need for donors and organizations to come, stay, and think long-term. Tanya Engelberger is based in Antananarivo, Madagascar. She works with Catholic Relief Services. It's a humanitarian aid agency. This is Today Explained. you