UN secretary general António Guterres warned this week that “Planet Earth is being pushed beyond its limits.” Every key indicator, he warned “ is flashing red.” He was responding to the latest report from the World Meteorological Organisation, which confirmed that the last 11 years have been the hottest ever, and that the Earth’s energy imbalance is now the highest in 65 years of records.
Energy imbalance is the rising surplus between the amount of heat the Earth receives – from the sun and from human activities including burning fossil fuels – and the amount it releases back into space.
The report focused in particular on the impact of this global heating on sea levels. The great capacity of the oceans to absorb excess heat has been chronically overstretched, and feedback loops ensure that sea levels will continue to rise for centuries to come, even if we stopped burning fossil fuels today.
The consequences for this country, with so much building so close to the sea and to tidal rivers, are going to be very severe. The report prompted an academic in Trinity College Dublin to warn that “emergency evacuation processes” are “urgently needed” to prepare for what is to come. Prof Iris Moller, a coastal geomorphologist, pointed out that Ireland was fortunate that the last four extreme storms have largely occurred at low tide. If Storm Chandra had occurred during a high spring tide, she said, the situation would have been many times worse. At some stage, Ireland’s luckwill run out.
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Such troubling statistics, and such grim but credible forecasts, should galvanise Ireland to action. But as recent reports have shown, national efforts to improve flood defences lag hopelessly behind current circumstances, let alone prepare the State for what is coming down the tracks.
Meanwhile, President Trump and his international protégés repeat their outrageous assertions that climate change is “a hoax”. Science has shown us otherwise. We must heed those flashing red lights before it is too late.
