An observer's view of climate change: Hurricane Milton is a harbinger – but it's not too late | Spectator editorial

DHe unleashed destruction Hurricane Milton has provided clear evidence that we are entering a critical and dangerous new phase in the planet's climate crisis. Rising fossil fuel emissions have fueled increases in ocean temperatures and sea levels, creating some of the most destructive storms Florida has ever experienced. Along with Hurricane Helen earlier, around 250 lives were lost and thousands of homes were destroyed. Florida has been reeling and forecasters warn there's more to come — a lot more.

It's a dire forecast that should spur Florida's political leaders to take urgent action to protect the state. Unusually, this is not the case. Despite the intensity of hurricanes and worst flooding in the past decade, Gov. Ron DeSantis has consistently rejected the idea that global warming is a threat to Florida, or that the phenomenon exists. A few weeks ago, he signed a law erasing the words “climate change” from state laws and effectively committing the state's future to burning fossil fuels. Such behavior is disturbing.

DeSantis is a Republican who matches the intensity of his party's nominee for President Donald Trump's climate denials. If the latter wins next month's election, the woes plaguing Florida will intensify and reverberate across the country and the rest of the planet. Trump has promised to dismantle environmental policies introduced by President Joe Biden and has promised to allow increased production of fossil fuels by drilling on public lands. By doing so, Trump would allow billions of tons of additional carbon to be pumped into our already overheated atmosphere and send a clear signal to other countries that they need not worry in the fight against global warming. to act.

Such a completely plausible scenario would have serious implications for our already vulnerable planet. Global temperatures are approaching the 1.5C rise that the 2015 Paris Agreement pledged to try to prevent. Today, an increase in 2C appears inevitable and is likely to continue to worsen. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) chairman Jim Skee recently warned that if current policies are maintained, the world could be headed for 3C of warming by 2100. In such a warming world, many tipping points will pass, from the melting of ice caps to the drying of the Amazon rainforest, to catastrophic sea-level rise and the displacement of millions of people whose homelands have become uninhabitable. . Earth will become climatically and politically unstable.

This is an unusual situation because of the basic observation that we have been aware of these dangers for decades, but have done little to impose measures that could avert them. Politicians and scientists will meet in a few weeks COP29 The UN climate change conference will be held in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. The meeting should be an opportunity for world leaders to mobilize nations into action. This is unlikely, as much of the debate is expected to focus on ways developed countries can pay poor countries to transition away from fossil fuels and adapt to the worst impacts of climate change. A commitment to stop burning fossil fuels was agreed in principle at the last COP meeting, but observers say there has been little movement. Carbon emissions are likely to continue for a long time to come.

This leaves the world with one last option. If we refuse to stop burning fossil fuels fast enough, we will need to find ways to capture the resulting emissions as they form or in the future – after they reach the atmosphere. This means creating ways to extract carbon emissions from factories and power plants and then sequester them. This is carbon capture and storage (CCS), which recently got a big boost when he was Energy Secretary in the UK. Ed Miliband has announced a £22bn investment in CCS projects which will eventually lead to 8.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year being emitted from British industrial plants.

It should be noted that the UK emitted 384 million tonnes of carbon dioxide last year, so the scheme will make little difference to our overall contribution to global warming. However, if it is successful, it should highlight the way out of the crisis by providing an additional weapon in the fight against global warming with renewable energy, electric cars and home insulation. From that perspective, Miliband is to be congratulated – though there are questions. For example, why spend public money on cleaning up emissions created by fossil fuels that make so much money for private companies?

Essentially, we are failing to stop global warming. We're not going to stop the carbon in the atmosphere from rapidly reaching dangerous levels, we need to find ways to get rid of it once it gets there. If we are to deal with the greatest threat facing civilization today, we will need every weapon we can develop for this purpose. The alternative is the global spread of carnage that engulfed Florida last week.