How Much Suffering Can COP30 Prevent?

“Suffering increases with every tenth of a degree of warming. That’s what renowned climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe said yesterday, speaking to a panel convened by Covering Climate Now and Sammy Roth of the new Climate-Colored Goggles newsletter in response to a widely circulated and much-discussed memo from Bill Gates, in which the Microsoft founder appeared to downplay the severity and urgency of the climate crisis.

In his memo, Gates asserts that climate change “will not lead to the extinction of humanity.” That’s true, Hayhoe said, but it’s also a useless argument because the scientists who sound the alarm about climate change have never argued that it will lead to the extinction of humanity. The fate of humanity in the face of the climate crisis is not a binary question, she explains, but a question of scale: to what extent will humanity suffer from climate change? And how much suffering can we avoid?

These are the questions that will be fundamentally at the heart of the work of COP30, the UN climate summit which opens next Monday in Belém, Brazil. Just last week, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said The Guardian and Amazon-based point of sale Sumuma that humanity has failed to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the target agreed by world leaders in the 2015 Paris Agreement. Global average temperatures have yet to rise so far – today we are at around 1.3°C of warming – but Guterres said that exceeding the 1.5°C threshold had become all but inevitable, due to countries’ consistently insufficient efforts to reduce carbon emissions. carbon. The consequences, he added, will be “devastating,” particularly for the world’s most vulnerable communities.

Yet Gates, in his memo, argues that the focus on climate change by scientists and advocates is overblown, arguing that poverty and disease pose far greater threats to humanity’s quality of life. Here, Hayhoe and other panelists had another issue to sort out with Gates last night. Separating these issues from climate change creates a false dichotomy, they said. In fact, climate change is exacerbating challenges like poverty and hunger, and the world will increasingly be unable to solve poverty and hunger without addressing climate change. As global warming continues unabated, “we’re talking about massive suffering,” Hayhoe said, “including the loss of human lives, as well as livelihoods, homes and much more. And that suffering is increasing degree by degree.”

So what will leaders in Belém do to stop rising temperatures and, therefore, alleviate humanity’s suffering? Guterres has pledged to protect nature – especially relevant as the Amazon will serve as the backdrop for this year’s COP – and to fight for-profit fossil fuel companies. Journalists in Belém and around the world will be watching to see if countries follow his example.