World mean temperature is up 1.1C since the industrial revolution. Climate experts believe we have 12 years before it rises enough to set up a self-reinforcing cycle, meaning trouble. All the same, Trump and Brazil's Bolsonaro remain in denial when climate scientists have already shown human agency and the facts are measurable.
Australia's mean temperature is up 1.5C since 1910. It has had prolonged severe drought causing vegetation to lose moisture and become fuel for a fire lit accidentally by lightning or careless human activity. The bush fires raging in New South Wales are one result. Thousands of homes have been lost despite the valiant efforts of overstretched firefighters, and some have even made the ultimate sacrifice.
The air is difficult to breathe even in the neighboring state of Victoria where the Australian Tennis Open is being held in Melbourne. Players affected have been forced to withdraw.
Human agency and the effects of key gas emissions have been proven by scientists and the longer nothing is done, the more difficult, even drastic, the solution. The UN Panel on Climate Change offered a prescription in 2018 to keep temperature rise in the future below danger levels. But implementation is another problem altogether, stymied by the rich and powerful nations.
The Panel's COP25 talks in Madrid last month ended more or less in failure though that word is seldom used. Major fossil-fuel producers, principally Saudi Arabia and the US, managed to thwart the rest of the world. In the final agreement, all countries are required merely to decide their pledges for COP25 in Glasgow this November. They do actually nothing to abate climate change.
Ironically, Australia with its right-wing government was a key supporter of the US, and Scott Morrison the prime minister is possibly the least welcome man in New South Wales, one community telling him point blank he was not wanted when he tried to visit. And the uncontrollable bush fires keep burning, continually exhausting firefighters in their efforts to abate them.
So where do we stand before the Glasgow COP26 meeting in November? Current policies will lead to an estimated 3C rise above preindustrial levels. As a point of reference, we are currently at 1.1C above and 1.5C begins troublesome coastal flooding. Current pledges will give us a 2.5 - 2.8C rise, still far from necessary for a comfortable livable planet.
Firm action is required, and thus the push for more ambitious pledges before COP26. World leaders have also been invited to Kunming in China for a major conference on safeguarding nature as more and more species become extinct. A month before COP26 it should reinforce the importance of reducing global warming.
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