Step up efforts to tackle climate change

The heat is on, literally, and the world cannot anymore afford to take a cozy attitude towards global warming.

July turned out to be the hottest month across the globe ever measured, and 2019 is on track to be one of the warmest years, as per data released by the European Union’s Earth observation network.

The signals are gloomy. Average global temperatures have already risen 1°C above the pre-industrial benchmark, enough to trigger longer and more intense droughts and heat waves.

Scorching heat waves saw records tumble across Europe last month, with unusually high temperatures around the Arctic Circle as well.

Europe has endured two exceptionally strong heat waves in a matter of weeks. Record highs tumbled across France, with the mercury peaking at 46°C on June 28 in the southern town of Verargues. The previous record, set back in 2003, was 44.1°C.

The second wave of heat saw Paris’s all-time high pulverised last month: Meteo France measured 42.6°C in the French capital on July 25 — more than 2°C hotter than the previous high, set more than 70 years ago.

In the first half of the year, temperature records were also shattered in New Delhi, Anchorage, Santiago and part of the Arctic Circle.

Wildfires burned in Siberia and Alaska, releasing more than 100 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere across June and July.

At the same time, Greenland’s ice sheet shed massive amounts of melted ice daily, totalling nearly 200 billion tonnes in July alone, according to the Danish Meteorological Institute.

The challenge comes on multiple fronts. Ocean heat hit a record high in 2018 raising concerns about the threat global warming is posing to marine life.

Every country has to do the needful. For example, researchers have cautioned that an increase in global warming from 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius above late 19th-century levels would cause tens of thousands of extra deaths in China’s cities every year.

Even if one assumes future adaptations to cope with scorching heat — better public health services, more air conditioning, easy access to drinking water — the half-degree bump in temperature would likely result in some 30,000 additional heat-related deaths per year, they reported in the journal “Nature Communications.”

“Our study quite clearly demonstrates the benefits of limiting global warming to 1.5C,” co-author Buda Su, a scientist at Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography in Urumqi, China, told AFP news agency recently.

What comes as a consolation, though, is the fact that a growing number of people, governments, cities and businesses understand that climate solutions can strengthen our economies and improve air quality and public health.

Inspired by Swedish teen climate activist Greta Thunberg, who began going on strike from school on Fridays, thousands of under 21s across Germany joined weekly marches indicating growing awareness about the perils of climate change among all age groups.

Nonetheless, more concrete governmental action is necessary across the globe.

World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Secretary-General Petteri Taalas has rightly cautioned: “July has rewritten climate history, with dozens of new temperature records at local, national and global levels. Global warming is clearly to blame. This is not science fiction. It is the reality of climate change.”

UN Secretary-General António Guterres hit the nail on the head by stating: “If we do not take action on climate change now, these extreme weather events are just the tip of the iceberg. And that iceberg is also rapidly melting.”