Scenery of icebergs near China-built Zhongshan station in Antarctica, January 2018.Bai Guolong/ Press Association. All rights reserved.
A dramatic event occurred at the halfway point of COP24, the climate summit in the Polish city of Katowice on 4-14 December. Four influential states – the United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait – decided that the excoriating IPCC report on climate change, published in October, must be “noted”, which is diplomatic speak for ignored.
In light of the urgency of the report, this is a significant setback. The IPCC's work processed a huge amount of data to conclude that the global human community had just twelve years to make the necessary, radical changes that would limit temperature rise to a maximum of 1.5C. That comes against the background of a 1.0C rise hitherto, most of it happening in the last twenty-five years.
