MPs and Councillors in North Yorkshire need to act on climate change now - Yorkshire Post Letters

Dear North Yorkshire Councillors and Members of Parliament,

You may have seen the news that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN body made up of the world’s leading climate scientists, has published a new report distilling all its detailed and lengthy reports over the last few years into a single 40-page document entitled the AR6 Synthesis Report: Climate Change 2023.

The report has been signed off by nearly 200 governments worldwide, including our own. Its purpose is to give policymakers a clear and comprehensible picture of climate science, the risks we face and how we can reduce those risks and prepare for future climate impacts.

The key findings of the report are stark, for example:

‘Climatic and non-climatic risks will increasingly interact, creating compound and cascading risks that are more complex and difficult to manage.’

‘In the near term, every region in the world is projected to face further increases in climate hazards …, increasing multiple risks to ecosystems and humans.’

‘Some future changes are unavoidable and/or irreversible but can be limited by deep, rapid and sustained global greenhouse gas emissions reduction.’

According to the report, we can still – just – avoid the worst impacts if we act quickly: ‘Deep, rapid, and sustained mitigation and accelerated implementation of adaptation actions in this decade would reduce future losses and damages related to climate change for humans and ecosystems.’

‘We still have time to act, and we have everything we need to act. We know which mitigation and adaptation measures work. But the sense of urgency in implementing them is currently lacking.’ (Lead report author Dr Friederike Otto).

‘This report is a clarion call to massively fast-track climate efforts by every country and every sector and on every timeframe. Our world needs climate action on all fronts: everything, everywhere, all at once.’ (UN secretary general, António Guterres).

The report sets out the devastation that has already been inflicted across much of the world. Extreme weather caused by climate breakdown has led to increased deaths from intensifying heatwaves in all regions, millions of lives and homes destroyed in droughts and floods, millions of people facing hunger, and ‘increasingly irreversible losses’ (report section A2.3) in vital ecosystems. According to the IPCC, the global average temperature is now about 1.1°C above pre-industrial levels. It is likely to break through the dangerous +1.5°C mark by the mid-2030s (report section B1.1). However, if greenhouse gas emissions can be made to peak as soon as possible, and are reduced rapidly in the following years, the most severe impacts that would follow a 1.5°C rise can still be avoided.

As our elected representatives, you will be responsible over the coming months and years for creating and implementing strategies, laws, policies and actions that will allow us to meet this enormous challenge.

We therefore urge you – Councillors and Members of Parliament – to read the IPCC synthesis report and to be guided by its findings.