Table of Contents
Another warning on warming
- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
- Special report on global warming of 1.5°C
- This report is taking about steps we need to take to stop global warming.
- Limit warming to within 1.5°C. Half a degree below the previous target of 2°C
- 1.5°C mark around 2040
- ocean acidification
- marine ecosystems
- not as intense droughts
- not as intense heat waves
- crops can manage
- reduced likelihood of an ice-free Arctic in summers
- 50 cm by 2100 in a 2°C warmer world, 10 cm more than for 1.5°C warming.
- But beyond 2100, the overall assurance of much higher sea level rise is greater in a 2°C world.
- Food security
- Health
- Fresh water
- Human security
- Livelihoods
- Economic growth
- IPCC report identifies two main strategies
- To limit warming to around 1.5°C with no or limited overshoot, global net carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions need to decline by about 45% from 2010 levels by 2030 and reach net zero around midcentury.
- In comparison, to limit warming to just below 2°C, the reductions needed are about 20% by 2030 and reach net zero around 2075.
- Sharing of carbon budget. How?
- Even if all the NDCs are implemented, the world is expected to warm by over 3°C.
- Deep divides among rich countries, emerging economies and least developed countries.
- Each will have to decide whether to play politics on a global scale for one’s own interests or to collaborate to protect the world and its ecosystems as a whole.
Target 1.5
- With sound policies, the world can still pull back, although major progress must be achieved by 2030.
- There is public support for this and governments must go even beyond what they have committed to.
- India, Pakistan and China are already suffering moderate effects of warming in areas such as water availability, food production and land degradation, and these will worsen, as the report says.
Salvaging a strategic partnership
- “An old friend is better than two new ones.” Russian proverb
- Sochi, Russia May 2018: Informal meeting
- U.S. State Department announced sanctions on a Chinese company that had imported the S-400 over eight months earlier, asserting that it was a signal to others engaged with the Russian defence sector.
- On Afghanistan, India expressed support for the “Moscow format”
- The U.S. and European sanctions between 2014 and 2016 are sector- and currency-specific.
- They affect entities operating in Europe and the U.S., and transactions in euro or dollar currencies.
- Actually imposing sanctions would hurt U.S. defence sales to India, defeating one of the principal objectives of the legislation.
- Our relationship with USA is based on partnership
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