This is brilliant. Another mind-busting gem of clarity and categoric explanation by Amy Werstervelt on the UN IPCC Report of April 2022.
We’ve already posted Mitigation Report Part 1.
This is the Mitigation Report Part 2.
She starts with:
Forget the Summary for Policymakers, the Technical Summary Is Where It’s At
If I could give other journalists covering this report just one piece of advice, it would be this. The Summary for Policymakers (SPM) goes through a tedious approval process during which representatives from 195 governments (some of them very dependent on our continued dependence on fossil fuels, cough cough the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, I’m looking at you). The Technical Summary, on the other hand, comes straight from the authors and is generally released at the same time as the SPM. As Max Boykoff, a contributing author to Ch 13 (on policy) put it: “The technical summary is the one that’s prepared by authors of the report. So it does go through a review process by governments and experts, but ultimately the authors have a say there.” Whereas with the SPM, while authors can reject input that would make the summary inaccurate, that seems to be the most they can do to maintain the integrity of that document; preventing it from becoming a mealy-mouthed political document on the other hand, not so much.
And you can guess that most media barely even touches the Technical Summary. Just the Summary for Policy Makers, arguably utterly pointless.
I’m not sure why anyone in media bothers with the SPM at all anymore except that it is shorter and maybe sounds less intimidating? The Technical Summary might add a few more pages (it’s 145 pages in total), but is so much more clearly written and straightforward it doesn’t take much longer to read and gives a much more accurate summary of what’s actually in the report. Again, it absolutely screams: Do something! Here are several options!
And as well as laying out the (pretty bloody awful) bad news, it also says exactly what we can do about it:
At the press conference announcing the release of the report, Diana Ürge-Vorsatz, a contributing lead author of the Technical Summary and vice-chair of Working Group III noted: “in every sector there are options available that can at least halve emissions by 2030 and keep open the possibility of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees.”
So check her out. She’s a bonfire in the darkness and you will just understand what’s actually going on once you read her stuff.
Her takeaway points (all of which she explains in the link above):
- Climate action and alleviating poverty are not mutually exclusive.
- Effective climate action requires multisolving
- Oh hello, we’re talking about power, not just energy
- You cannot solve for climate while building new fossil fuel infrastructure
- Rich people are a problemNo country is currently doing enough. Or even pledging enough
- We only need CDR (Carbon Dioxide Removal) because we’re failing to reduce emissions and kick the fossil fuel habit
- Incremental change won’t cut it
- Focus on the energy source and ignore the power structure at your peril
- Once again: People need services, not necessarily energy and materials
- Corporations are amongst the primary obstructions to climate action. Weird, because climate change is a huge risk for corporations too!
- The role media plays—good and bad—in shaping climate policy is finally being acknowledged
- Eliminate fossil fuel subsidies already