The Most Scary Climate Graph Politicians Love to Ignore
When heat records are broken worldwide at record speed, you would expect leaders around the globe to be alarmed and take drastic measures. However, they don’t. Nor does the media seem particularly alarmed, except for a few leading quality newspapers like The Guardian that warned the world this weekend that February is on course to break an unprecedented number of heat records.
Shocking climate data and examples of extreme weather are reported from all over the world, for instance, in Morocco where, in the first half of February, twelve weather stations registered over 33.9 Celsius, which is more than 5 degrees Celsius above average for July.
The Mediterranean warms faster than most other areas in the world, and that is, for instance, also noticeable a bit further north of Morocco, where Spain experiences three years of minimal amounts of rain in combination with record-high temperatures. This combination explains why Catalonia declared a drought emergency last week. Officials stated that the reservoirs that provide water for Barcelona are now record-breaking empty and below 16 percent of their capacity.
Have a look at this graph from Professor Eliot Jacobson. It shows that the global surface temperatures have been rising since 1940. But the yellow line that represents the data of 2023 escapes the pack of other sequences around May last year and now sprints ahead as the red line into unknown territory, recently breaching the two degrees Celsius warming above the pre-industrial baseline for four days.
Last November, this happened for the first time, but then just for two days. As so often before, we quickly get used to bad news, so these four days get hardly any attention in the media and zero attention from politicians.
I’m not claiming that these politicians have nothing else to worry about in times of massive violations of human rights, sudden death syndrome, populists on the rise worldwide, and American politics entering unknown territory, not unlike that red line gone away in the graph. But there will always be other urgent and important issues that need simultaneous attention.
Consistently ignoring the climate crisis because it’s never seen as more urgent tomorrow than today will make the challenge each day harder to solve than yesterday.
Worse: the unsolved climate crisis will worsen other problems as well.
In short, the climate crisis feeds the water and food crises, while each contributes to further destabilizing global peace and security.
These aspects of Planetary Security were discussed last week at the UN Security Council high-level open debate on the impact of climate change and food insecurity on maintaining international peace and security.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres summarized his view as “Empty bellies fuel unrest” and added that climate disasters and conflict both inflame inequalities, imperil livelihoods, and force people from their homes. That can strain relations, stoke mistrust, and sow discontent. Meanwhile, diminished resources and mass displacement can intensify competition.
Conflict can easily be sparked where tensions are high, institutions are weak, and people are marginalized. And women and girls pay the highest price. Just as they do when food is short, and climate disasters hit.
At the same time, climate and conflict are two leading drivers of our global food crisis. Guterres said: “Where wars rage, hunger reigns.”
He proposed several measures to break these deadly links between conflict, climate, and food insecurity. One of these aims to target the points at which food insecurity, climate, and conflict meet. This can be done by creating partnerships, policies, and programs that address these issues together, for example, by considering climate risk and food security in peacebuilding or investing in adaptation programs that support communities in managing shared resources.
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