SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the more-good-news-for-your-children-and-yourself dept.
It looks like the Paris Agreement is as dead as the fried chicken at my local deli.
At Paris, in 2015, the World agreed to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The latest report of the EU's Climate Change Service shows (summary pdf) that this target has been royally breached, at least for Europe. Temperatures there, averaged over the last 5 years, have increased by 2.2 degrees celsius.
Europe, at least, has a climate change service to measure these things. As for the rest of the world, an extrapolation of the pattern shown in Figure 1c, here, indicates that, there too, demand for swimming pools and flood insurance will grow.
To illustrate the complexity of the problem, the heatwave in mid-July of 2022 was caused by hot air from the Sahara moving into Europe, driving temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius. By mid-August, a stationary high-pressure system with clear skies and weak winds took hold, and caused a second heatwave, which was made worse due to the soil being dried out by the mid-July event, and no rains since.
Events above the Sahara might have come a second time in play, here. Increasing temperatures lead to a stronger evaporation over sea, while the land heats up more. This results in a stronger temperature gradient, which draws rains deeper inland: heavier rainfalls now are reported in the central Sahara, in summer, with formerly dry valleys being put under four meters of water. This causes less Sahara dust in the atmosphere, and hence shields the land less from solar radiation: the EU's report mentions that 2022 surface solar radiation was the highest in a 40 year record, and part of a positive trend.
To end with a positive note, the EU ain't doing so bad, compared to Greenland: three different heatwaves in 2022, and an average September temperature more than 8 degrees Celsius higher than normal.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Monday April 24, @08:54AM
What you're describing, in short, is the prisoner's dilemma.
There's also emergent norm theory though, which posits that the behavior of a crowd is determined by the guiding actions of a few distinct, leading, members.
That is what we're actually seeing right now, and have seen in the past. The driving forces behind treating the ozone hole as a serious problem were the United States and Europe. The same reasoning as you mentioned could have been followed: if the United States and Europe unilaterally stop their production of CFCs, they'll cut in their own flesh, to the benefit of competitors. The enforcing stick there were import controls, blocking any products using CFCs from the wealthy consumer markets of the United States and Europe. It worked.
We see the same process playing out now with regards to climate change. Both the United States and Europe are the horses pulling the cart. Enforcing, though, happens in stages: a first stage was an obligation to show energy efficiency labels on consumer goods being sold here. The next step was a carbon emissions pricing system -- now being implemented in China too. And the next step after that might be a carbon border tax.