Macroscope | Fight climate change by funding concrete projects, not pious hopes

Predictions of doom might sound extreme, but the continued inaction of policymakers and influence of energy sector interests should ring alarm bells

With the world at a critical point, government, public agency and private sector resources must be combined and directed towards projects that can truly make a difference

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A visitor takes photos at the sprawling temporary lake at Badwater Basin salt flats in in Death Valley National Park, California, on October 21. Tropical Storm Hilary delivered a year’s worth of rain to Death Valley in a single day in August and flood damage forced the iconic desert park’s closure for eight weeks. Photo: Getty Images/AFP

Published: 5:30am, 19 Nov 2023Updated: 6:10am, 19 Nov 2023

To suggest the world is hurtling towards its doom might sound extreme, yet it’s hard to avoid that conclusion if we listen to more pessimistic – or perhaps realistic – projections about global warming from climate scientists. What’s more, even they do not seem to have grasped the full scope of the problem.

The world still has too many climate change sceptics whose ignorance is matched only by cynicism. Energy sector interests have too great a hold on governments, and the investment profession is often in bed with them, while the public appears impotent to do much beyond protesting.

This year will be the hottest year in recorded history, according to non-profit research group Climate Central and the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.

On November 15, the International Monetary Fund published a blog post highlighting the fact that climate change has begun to affect world trade seriously via droughts in the Panama Canal, having an impact on ports around the world. Given that trade is key to global economic welfare, the worsening impact of climate change in this area should worry us all.

Not only that, a group of climate experts headed by Columbia University adjunct professor James Hansen, a former Nasa scientist, said in a report that global warming was still accelerating and that official warming targets were probably out of reach already.

This is the inauspicious background against which the latest United Nations global climate summit, COP28, will be commence in Dubai at the end of the month. These summits have proved in the past to be long on empty promises and pious hopes but short on devising concrete strategies and achievable targets.