On 28 February 2022, Working Group II (WGII) released its contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report. This is the second part of the report following the release of the first part in August 2021. Aiming to assess ‘Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability’, WGII provides a stark warning of the extinction event that is facing us due to ‘human-induced’ climate breakdown. Any study into the ‘vulnerability of socio-economic systems to climate change’ cannot avoid laying bare the consequences of the deliberate underdevelopment, debt and plunder that face the poor nations at the hands of the imperialist nations. GEORGE O’CONNELL reports.
The report sets out what is at stake: ‘a liveable and sustainable future for all’. Such a scenario is complete fiction for the enormous proportion of humanity that is already being confronted with the deadly consequences of climate breakdown. Over 40% of the world’s population are ‘highly vulnerable’ to climate change and half of humanity already face severe water shortages each year. At the current 1.1°C global temperature increase, half a million more people are at risk of serious flooding yearly. By 2050, according to all scenarios, one billion people living in coastal areas less than 10m above sea level will be at risk. UN Secretary General António Guterres described the findings as ‘an atlas of human suffering’. Such suffering is being caused by processes that are increasingly becoming irreversible, especially if global heating is not limited to 1.5°C.
How can global heating be limited to 1.5°C by the end of the century, which is now the absolute minimum obtainable temperature rise? It will not be achieved through the politicians of imperialist nations, who remain committed to defending a decaying system of global capitalism regardless of the consequences. The Glasgow Climate Agreement, drawn up at COP26 in Britain last November, left global temperature rise on course for 2.4°C according to a report by Climate Action Tracker. The WGII report makes it clear that temperatures as astronomically high as this will be disastrous, increasing the risk of extreme weather events from ‘high’ to ‘very high’. The current categorisation of ‘high’ risk has seen 11,000 extreme weather events from 1970 to 2019, resulting in two million deaths and $3.64 trillion damage, according to the World Meteorological Organisation. The frequency of such events has increased five-fold over the past 50 years, a period that has seen the majority of this 1.1°C rise. Imperialist politicians and world leaders remain entirely apathetic as limiting to 1.5°C rapidly becomes impossible. The entire culture of these UN annual climate conferences has been one of postponement. This report shows that humanity cannot afford any more postponement: ‘any further delay will miss a rapidly closing window of opportunity’ to secure this ‘liveable future’. As Guterres identifies: ‘this abdication of leadership is criminal. The world’s biggest polluters are guilty of arson of our only home.’
The report states that ‘targeting a climate resilient, sustainable world involves fundamental changes to how society functions, including changes to underlying values, world-views, ideologies, social structures, political and economic systems, and power relationships.’ This is simply a watered-down rehashing of what Fidel Castro stated 30 years earlier in his address to the 1992 UN Rio Earth Summit. Castro identified ‘unequal trade, protectionism and foreign debt’ as deliberate mechanisms used by the imperialist nations to ‘transfer to the Third World lifestyles and consumer habits that ruin the environment.’ These mechanisms are used to facilitate the plunder, looting and super-exploitation of the poorer nations to maintain the lifestyles of those in the imperialist nations.
The WGII instalment is the first of such reports that focuses on the specific consequences of these mechanisms on the poorer nations and exposes the grim reality facing them as they are unable to implement any mitigation strategies. We are warned that ‘losses and damages’ are ‘strongly concentrated among the poorest vulnerable populations.’ Over the last decade mortality from extreme weather events has been around 15 times higher in poor countries than in the richest parts of the world. These are the nations that are forced into states of extreme underdevelopment by debt owed to the rich nations.
At the end of 2020, the World Bank estimated the total external debt stocks of ‘low-and middle-income countries’ to stand at $8.7 trillion. These are crippling levels: in 2020 these nations spent nearly 17% of what they took in from exports of goods, services, and primary income on simply maintaining their external debt. There is a direct correlation between such astronomical debt levels and a complete inability to offer any mitigation to the deadly consequences of climate change. Mozambique is mentioned 33 times in the full report as a particularly vulnerable nation. In 2019 it bore the brunt of Cyclone Idai, ‘the deadliest storm on record to strike the African continent’, with at least 602 deaths in the coastal city of Beira alone. The report states that solely ‘risk of river flooding to bridges’ costs Mozambique $200m each year in current conditions, or 1.5% of its GDP, and this could rise to $400m per year by 2050. Mozambique spent 36% of its income from exports of goods and services on maintaining its debt in 2020, and currently owes 154% of its yearly Gross National Income to creditors. These are utterly unsustainable levels that can never be paid, and now the populations of these countries are increasingly being made to pay with their lives.
The sheer gravity of the climate catastrophe facing us means that no nations and no populations remain unscathed, including that of imperialist Britain. A lead author of the IPCC report has warned that Britain ‘is very much not adapted to climate change and not prepared’. More flooding from rivers, at the coasts, and from intense downpours in urban areas will put sewage works, airports and seaports at risk. Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific advisor to the government, warned that the effects discussed in the report ‘will strain housing, agriculture, transport and supply chains – little of which was built with such pressure in mind’. Vallance is recognising the complete inadequacy of Britain’s infrastructure to cope with the inevitable crisis facing it. Indeed, only by ripping up the entire infrastructure of imperialism and installing a new system in its ruins can the climate crisis be addressed, and a ‘liveable future for all’ made achievable.
