Group of scientists release draft IPCC report as they fear it will be watered down by governments
The IPCC considers degrowth to be key to mitigating climate change
Juan Bordera / Fernando Prieto 08/07/2021 [GOOGLE TRANSLATION}
On June 23, something very unusual happened. AFP (Agence France Press) leaked part of the content of the summary for politicians of Group II of the IPCC... the most repeated headline - taken from the report itself - was:
“ Life on Earth can recover from major climate change by evolving into new species and creating new ecosystems. Not humanity ” .
The anomaly has recurred within two months. Another breach in the once airtight IPCC, another leak.
CTXT has had access to the content of another part of the Sixth Report of the IPCC...
- - "It would be necessary for CO2 emissions to reach their maximum before 2025 and to reach net zero between 2050 and 2075".
- - “No new coal or gas plants should be built, and the current ones should reduce their useful life”, which is typically more than 30 years, to around 10 years.
- - It is recognized that achieving net zero emissions requires a certain degree of carbon capture and sequestration and carbon removal (CDR-CCS-BECCS). Technologies that are not developed far from it, and that represents another kick forward thinking that technological evolution will always come to the rescue. Absolutely contradicting one of the basic principles of science: the precautionary principle…
- Other factors that can help would be the climate social movements - the IPCC is recognizing the work of climate strikes - which help provoke an increase in another of the key factors: a high percentage of committed people. It also emphasizes that the measures to achieve reductions have to be changes in social behavior: less transport, relocation of work, a more vegetarian diet, et
- The essential radical change in an economic system whose perverse operation of accumulation and reproduction of capital in perpetuity has brought us to the current critical point is not clearly mentioned
- If the emergency brakes of the system were not activated without delay, they would lead us to climate change that is already completely runaway.
There we can glimpse the small / large failure of the body... we are not talking about lonely radical scientists: in addition to the European Environment Agency, Nature, one of the most prestigious academic journals in the world has already published studies showing that the only "solution" for both the energy transition and the climate emergency is to assume that continuing to grow without causing more damage is obviously impossible, and consequently a stabilization and / or a decrease in energy needs to be planned in the material sphere...
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* Thank you, members of the Scientist Rebellion collective for collaborating in bringing us the leak. To the CSIC scientist Antonio Turiel, for advising the realization of this article. And to some scientists who do not want to be named - so as not to take occupational risks - who have also helped. They know who they are.
Juan Bordera is a screenwriter, journalist and activist at Extinction Rebellion and València en Transició.
