Could we stop climate change

From 30 April - 4 May 2007, the third working group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) meets in Bangkok to summarize the best available science on how to stop climate change. Specifically, discussions center on the costs of climate action, the wide policies and measures available, and the speed with which climate action will be able to deliver the deep emissions cuts required to keep the climate safe.

In this briefing WWF wants to showcase a number of concrete initiatives from around the world that show that politicians, businesses and ordinary people are already taking real actions to save the climate. This short briefing note of inspiring actions stands in sharp contrast to the doom and gloom that dominate reporting of the climate challenge.

IPCC working group 1 and 2 have made the situation sufficiently clear - there is absolutely no time to lose. People are rapidly changing the world's climate, and with it undermine the web of life. IPCC working group 3 analyzes emissions, emission projections, mitigation options in the short and longer term, and options for policies, measures and instruments.

According to the published Summary of IPCC working group 2, up to 30% or plant and animal species are at risk of extinction at a temperature increase of around 2°C; millions of people will be affected by sea level rise and flooding (approximately 100 million people live within 1 m altitude of the sea level at high tide); poor communities will be especially vulnerable, especially in high risk areas such as river and coastal floodplains; and millions of people run the risk of their health being affected.

Much of the discussion in IPCC working group 3 is about cost. Of course it will cost money to change the global energy system to clean sources; it needs considerable effort from governments, businesses, and individuals, to put these changes into place over the next two decades. But this venture is full of opportunities and of thrilling, positive, constructive endeavour. And it is affordable.

The cost of doing nothing, however, will be staggering. All types of infrastructure will be affected and will have to be re-built: making roads and railways secure from flooding and storms, moving settlements away from rivers and coasts that threaten floods, securing buildings, electricity lines, and factories from storms. Hurricane Katrina was just a small foretaste of what adaptation actually means. Adaptation will not be a gradual getting used to things but a struggle for survival - in industrialized countries as much as in less developed nations.

Literature that IPCC is drawing on was also used when compiling the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, published by the British government in October 2006. In it Nicholas Stern showed that the cost of inaction on climate change could be as high as 5 - 20% of global consumption. The cost of action against climate change, however, is expected to only constrain GDP growth by a fraction of that figure, making it the cost-effective option.

It is important to remember that calculating the costs is but one element for decision-makers to consider - climate change is such a huge challenge for mankind and the well-functioning of life-sustaining ecosystems that even in the absence of any cost assessments mitigation and clean energy investments are an ethical must.

There is today ample information out there to tell decision-makers what to do. In this document, WWF has compiled a short list of policy initiatives, business efforts, and actions by individuals which WWF has helped to bring to life and which illustrate the growing movement of actions and activists who want to help turn the tide.