UN’s climate change panel inhabits a universe without parallel

With Donald Trump pulling the US from the Paris deal, China building hundreds of new coal plants around the world, global emissions back on the rise and countries squabbling over scarce funds, it’s no wonder many people believe the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change inhabits a parallel universe.

The latest special report into 1.5C warming underscores the point. Climate scientists are warning of extreme peril ahead and policymakers are busy designing a new world regime that dictates how people act and what they can eat.

As lobby group 350.org says, within the next decade or so we will need to radically change the ways we build our houses, move from one place to another and grow our food.

Back in the real world, governments are unable even to deliver remedies scientists say will put the world on to a warming course more than double what is required to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

The best hope is climate models that have to a large extent overestimated the warming to come continue to be wrong.

As with all IPCC reports, the latest one comes loaded with political intent. As much as climate change, the document sets out a pathway to achieve the UN’s broader sustainable development goals.

For the UN, climate change is a mechanism to deliver a more equitable sharing of global resources. This is explicit in the summary for policymakers in the latest report, and it is what drives developing nations to come to the table for a global agreement.

There will now be a good deal of pressure applied for governments to increase their ambition on climate change, including the provision of funds from the developed world to help developing nations cope.

The US has called the IPCC out for overreach, and Australia has pushed back ahead of imminent talks on replenishing a Global Climate Fund.

Despite this, aspects of yesterday’s special report would make the world a better place. Better land use can be both more profitable and environmentally sustainable.

Support by the Australian government for plans to plant one billion trees to reboot our plantation timber industry has received scant attention, yet this measure could achieve about one-quarter of Australia’s Paris targets while creating an estimated 18,000 jobs.