EDITORIAL | If SA doesn’t act now, climate change will bring job losses it can ill afford

At another time, Antonio Guterres might have been accused of exaggeration in his response to the latest global warming report by the world’s top climate scientists.

After its release this week, the UN secretary-general described the report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as a “code red for humanity”. “The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable,” he said, pointing out that “greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and deforestation are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk”.

The report, with more extreme weather patterns around the world, suggests Gutteres’ words must be taken seriously by everyone, particularly governments and policymakers.

The report shows that what previously may have been the subject of contention or scepticism has been put beyond doubt. Ahead of the COP26 climate talks in the UK in about three months, it confirms a global consensus on the peril facing humanity and the urgency for countries to take intervention measures.

Among other things, the panel found that the past decade was likely hotter than any period in the past 125,000 years and that combustion and deforestation have raised carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere to historically unprecedented levels. Methane and nitrous oxide also increased to stratospheric levels.

Critically, it will require us to move with speed to devise transitional strategies that will mitigate the unavoidable job losses that will come with weaning ourselves off coal and reducing our carbon footprint.

The changes in our climate are already evident, with floods, drought and wildfires affecting most regions of the world. Fears are that some of the damage may have become irreversible.

The consequences will be felt not only by the major economies, who have been the main polluters, but by smaller ones, including SA.

In our case, the IPCC report poses questions about our continued dependence for energy on coal, one of the culprits in global warming. It should give impetus to SA’s transition from fossil to green energy forms.

Critically, it will require us to move with speed to devise transitional strategies that will mitigate the unavoidable job losses that will come with weaning ourselves off coal and reducing our carbon footprint. We also must find solutions for other sectors that will be impacted, such as the motor-manufacturing sector, faced with the world’s accelerating migration from fossil energy to electric power.

The report confirms that, rather than treat the crisis as a future eventuality about which we can postpone mitigative action, it is a calamity that is already unfolding before our very eyes. The time is now to make the difficult choices and act to act resolutely.

Yet the challenge is not just about fossil fuel pollution. It is also to find a comprehensive suite of policies aimed at curbing the general mismanagement of our natural resources, through water pollution and deforestation, among other things.

We owe it not just to ourselves, but to future generations to act now.