Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

By Willy De Backer - European Trade Union Institute, May 2, 2023

IPCC 6th assessment report – synthesis

On 20 March 2023, climate scientists published another ‘last warning’ on the climate emergency. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the synthesis report of its 6th assessment on the state of the global climate crisis. This synthesis draws together all the main findings of the three working group reports which were already published in 2021 and 2022.

The IPCC press release points to the fact that greenhouse gas emissions are still rising globally, and demands more ambitious actions to secure a ‘liveable future for all’. For a longer summary of the main messages of this synthesis report, read the analyses by Carbon Brief and the World Resources Institute.

Despite these scientifically alarming reports, the IPCC’s political impact in terms of real effective climate policies remains extremely low and therefore every cycle of reports leads to a more fundamental critique of the organisation’s way of working.

Hereunder, a collection of links to some of the critical articles we found on this new IPCC report:

• The Conversation: IPCC’s conservative nature masks true scale of action needed to avert catastrophic climate change
• Inside Climate News: Corporate Interests ‘Watered Down’ the Latest IPCC Climate Report, Investigations Find
• European Green Journal: Why the IPCC Can’t Escape Climate Politics
• The Nation: The Media’s Recent Turn to “Climate Optimism” Is a Cruel Fantasy
• Carbon Copy: IPCC’s climate reports reveal an unequal science

By staff - The Climate and Community Project, et. al., May 2023

It is indisputable that the climate emergency requires the United States to rapidly transform its majority fossil energy system to 100% clean and renewable energy.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recent sixth synthesis report makes absolutely clear that an unprecedented bold transition to renewable energy with an equally aggressive effort to halt new fossil fuel development and phase out existing fossil fuel usage is absolutely vital to avoiding the most catastrophic consequences of climate change.

This necessary transformation presents a tremendous opportunity to pursue a far more just path forward—one that ends the status quo entrenchment of the fossil fuel industry; empowers federal agencies to use their authorities to accelerate the transitions to a justly sourced, justly implemented, resilient, and equitable power system; actualizes the principles of environmental justice; and preserves our core environmental laws.

This system is composed of our most commonsense and affordable solutions that can be deployed in an efficient and just manner: energy conservation, distributed and resilient renewable energy and storage, and responsibly-sited utility-scale renewables, all paired with robust community engagement and opportunities for real energy democracy.

However, both Congress and the Biden administration are failing to exercise their imaginations to embed justice in a renewable energy future.

After the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, both Democratic and Republican Congress members have proposed numerous “permitting reform” proposals, but the majority continue to argue that achieving a fast transition to renewable energy necessarily means undermining bedrock environmental laws like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

This false logic must be interrogated. While these proposals might marginally improve the deployment of utility-scale renewable energy particularly on pristine lands, our energy needs can and must also be met with renewable energy on built surfaces that is more resilient, affordable, and respectful toward communities and wildlands.

Furthermore, any such purported gains of “permitting reform” proposals would be massively dwarfed by the emissions of fossil fuel projects that would also be expedited and result in deepening substantial environmental injustices for countless communities around the nation.

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).

By Rebecca Solnit - Bioneers, April 25, 2023

By staff - International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), April 21, 2023

Climate scientists have issued a dire warning about an impending global catastrophe – there is an urgent action from G20 governments.

Rather than continuing to allow corporate interests to dominate decision-making, the L20 statement calls for a globally coordinated, state-led, rapid just transition to combat climate change.

Chronic underinvestment in the real economy and corporate price gauging have created a cost-of-living crisis, with workers bearing a disproportionate share of the burden. Historic levels of inequality and social injustice have eroded trust in democracy and hindered global growth.

The international labour movement urges G20 leaders to prioritise the protection and promotion of labour rights. Fair and living wages, collective bargaining, social protection and decent work are essential for a new social contract for recovery and resilience.

Leaders need to act for the rights of informal workers, asylum-seekers and migrant workers, women, young workers and take urgent action to eliminate forced and child labour.

India’s presidency of the G20 should be marked with achievements of global goals and coherence across various agendas. The L20 calls for the restructuring of the International Financial Institutions and the repurposing the international financial architecture to serve a just transition to carbon neutrality, sustainable development and investment in the care economy and public services.

By Tahir Latif - Greener Jobs Alliance, April 18, 2023

When we at GJA decided to produce our recent three-part summary of the latest IPCC report, the purpose was to break down an extremely lengthy and often impenetrable text into points that could be used for making arguments.  As the world’s biggest assessment of its kind, broader in scope and coverage than any other, and especially given its oft-quoted nature, getting at what it actually says seemed fundamental to the continuing debate.

But during the writing it became apparent that just saying what the report says, albeit in simplified language, can come across as whole-hearted endorsement of the report. And that’s not what we had in mind. Our summaries were intended as a tool, not advertising. In truth, opinion in GJA about the report is as diverse as anywhere else, and the following is the author’s opinion, not a collective one held by GJA.

Some critique was touched on in our summaries, but it’s worth dwelling a little more on the pros and cons.

The biggest pro is the starkness of the picture the report paints, of where we are, of the sheer scale of the task ahead of us, and of how poor our progress has been thus far. As was said in our summaries, very little will come as any surprise to climate activists, but to have it laid out on a planetary canvas is immensely useful – time is running out, things are getting worse faster than before, the global south is the most vulnerable, inequalities within societies are critical, all the building blocks upon which our own activities rest. Equally, the solutions dwell on the words we cherish the most – transformation, transition, redistribution, restoration, equality, justice.

Where the report falls short is in its ambiguous use of language, such that, for all the aforementioned words, precisely how the solutions work out in practice is not clear, and probably deliberately so, in deference to the prevailing political winds. In particular, the assumption that the work that needs to be done can happen through ‘markets’ appears wildly naïve, if not misleading. Even more dubious is the idea that a market-based approach can ever generate the level of collaboration and cooperation on a global scale that is required when such an approach is antithetical to the very precepts of capitalism, and indeed threatens them.

In response to this idea of threat, the report focuses strongly on green technology and the financing required to roll it out, which itself places emphasis on the role of the developed world to manage the climate response in a benign fashion. The conclusions arrived at also, at best, betray the inherent bias of modelling carried out by the developed world with all its assumptions about the world order and, at worst, reproduces or even exacerbates a neo-colonial status quo, with solutions imposed on the developing world by the developed. Kevin Anderson’s piece in Brave New Europe lays this out far more eloquently than we ever could.

Of course, IPCC is not directly saying ‘we must do this through capitalism’ and it may be that the dependence on markets refers only to the early stages where we have to deal with ‘things as they are’, before we can move on to build a more sustainable model. It’s possible that the authors know perfectly well that the actions needed can’t be accommodated within the existing paradigm and are aware that that point will play itself out. Again, it’s not entirely clear – the report aims to be all things to all people, remaining consistent on the urgency of the situation while ensuring it’s not overly offensive to those who hold social and onomic power

But I’d temper criticism with a consideration of scale. If we look at the Labour Party, at some Trade Unions, and other organisations, as you go up the hierarchy compromise and dilution tend to take over. At the global level, as we’ve seen with recent COPs, wording gets watered down in deference to certain nations’ insistence and action is stalled. For a report on this scale to say as much as it does is quite remarkable compared with the insipid nature of most government statements, even if the criticisms of it are perfectly valid.

Ultimately, it comes to what we make out of the report, and that brings us back to the original purpose of our summaries, to provide some bedrock for mobilising our arguments, to convey the urgency of the situation to the layperson, and to challenge inadequate solutions even where the report itself appears ambivalent. In that regard, having the case made in this report, whatever its shortcomings, is an essential component in our struggle towards a better future.

By Tahir Latif - Greener Jobs Alliance, April 11, 2023

This piece provides a summary of the latest IPCC synthesis report based on their sixth Assessment Report (AR6), part C, which deals with the ‘Urgency of Near-Term Integrated Action’. In other words, what we need to do by 2030 to have any chance of meeting the 1.5° or 2° targets.

As with the previous summaries, nothing here is likely to be too surprising to climate activists – the value is in seeing the situation laid out so systematically in the report, but also in the shortcomings that even this otherwise hard-hitting report exhibits, and which are touched on in the critique section.

General themes

Most starkly, ‘the choices and actions implemented in this decade will have impacts now and for thousands of years’. The level of urgency has increased since AR5.

Climate resilient development integrates adaptation and mitigation and requires international co-operation, but there is a ‘rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.’

The report warns that past development constrains future paths, as does every increment of warming. Existing constraints include:

• Poverty, inequity and injustice,
• Siloed responses,
• Barriers to finance and technology,
• Trade-offs with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

‘Deep, rapid and sustained mitigation’ together with ‘accelerated implementation of adaptation actions’ this decade would reduce losses and damages and improve air quality and health. By contrast, delaying would lock in high emissions infrastructure, risk stranded assets, and increase costs, losses and damages, while lowering the chances of success.

High upfront investment is needed, with ‘significant distributional consequences within and between countries’, along with potentially disruptive changes in lifestyle. The cost Vs benefit equation tips in favour of benefits the more rapidly investment is undertaken. Significantly, however, the investment required during 2020-2030 to limit warming to 2° or 1.5°are a factor of three to six greater than current levels.

Sustainable development requires just transition principles in employment. Eradicating extreme poverty and providing sustainable development in low-emitting countries ‘can be achieved without significant global emissions growth.’ Finance and technology development is required to leapfrog or transition to low emissions.

Vulnerability is exacerbated by inequity and marginalisation linked to gender, ethnicity, disability, age, income level and historic and ongoing patterns of colonialism. By contrast, ‘individuals with high socio-economic status contribute disproportionately to emissions.’ Reducing emissions-intensive consumption is strongly associated with societal well-being

By Tahir Latif - Greener Jobs Alliance, April 3, 2023

Summarising Part A of the report was straightforward as it comprised a factual assessment of where we are now.

By contrast, Part B covers Long Term responses and uses sophisticated modelling to project future scenarios based on different sets of assumed developments. While nothing undermines the basic conclusion that radical action is required very quickly, we do enter more subjective territory in terms of the scenarios chosen and the assumptions underpinning them.

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, March 31, 2023

There is a through-line between the denial of sick days to railroad workers and residents of East Palestine fleeing their homes in the aftermath of a derailed freight train poisoning their town. The through-line is the rail industry’s drive for profit costing workers and communities their health and safety. The through-line is workers sounding the alarm, to no avail.

For decades, the railroad industry has been increasing profits by raising prices and cutting labor costs, resulting in degraded safety standards and short-staffing. This, and the pursuit of short-term profit, are at the heart of why 45,000 rail workers have lost their jobs since 2015, why rail industry lobbyists have spent millions to undermine safety regulations, why the industry has delayed the electrification of railroads, and why a “100% preventable” rail disaster in East Palestine has caused residents to flee, animals to die, and at least 1.1 million gallons of water and 15,000 pounds of soil to become contaminated. To those who own the railroads, all of this has been a great success: CEOs at five of the largest railroad conglomerates have made $200 million over the last 3 years. After all, the point of private industry is profit.

Private interests must be prevented from dictating the future of rail– critical infrastructure that serves as a backbone for the economy, communities, and a climate-safe future. To that end, the Labor Network for Sustainability supports Railroad Workers United’s demand to nationalize the railroads.

Alongside necessary public investments, public ownership of rail will allow us to transform our rail system into one that truly serves the common good. Untethered from the market, we can electrify and expand rail, institute fairer working conditions, and engage communities throughout the process so that equity, sustainability, and justice are at the forefront.

The latest Synthesis Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) clearly stated that the choices we make in the next decade will impact us now and for the next thousand years. Now is the time for bold decisions. Without public and democratic ownership of rail, many of those crucial decisions will not be made by us– they will be made by a wealthy few.

To our partners and allies who value democracy, workers rights, and climate justice– join us in demanding that rail becomes a public good!

By Tahir Latif - Greener Jobs Alliance, March 27, 2023

This piece provides a summary of the latest IPCC synthesis report based on their sixth Assessment Report (AR6).

Given that even the relatively short ‘summary for policy makers’ is not an easy read, here we attempt to draw out the basic information about where we currently are. None of these points will surprise anyone but having them to hand in this way will we hope be useful. Note that this piece deals only with section A of the report, covering the current state of the climate. A further blog will cover parts B and C, which are about modelling to project likely scenarios for the long and short-term respectively.

By Arjun Makhijami, Sylvia Chi, et.al. - Just Solutions Collective, March 17, 2023