On November 6, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) published an advance of their report “State of the world climate 2017". There it was announced that this year will be one of the three hottest years ever registered (the other two were 2015 and 2016) with ever more frequent devastating effects, such as hurricanes, floods, heat waves and droughts. January to September registered an average global temperature of approximately 1.1º C above the pre-industrial levels, and the five-year period from 2013 to 2017 will be the hottest ever registered.

The indicators of long term climate change, such as increased concentrations of carbon dioxide, the rise in sea levels and the acidification of the oceans, continue to increase while the ice of the Arctic, the extension of frozen sea in the Antarctic and the glaciers continue to decrease. The ice cap of Greenland–a key element for oceanic circulation–has lost nearly 3.6 trillion tons of ice mass since 2002.

“We have witnessed extraordinary meteorological phenomena, temperatures reaching +50º C in Asia, unprecedented hurricanes in the Caribbean and the Atlantic which have even come to Ireland, devastating monsoon flooding that has affected millions of people and an implacable drought in East Africa”, declared the General Secretary of the WMO, Petteri Taalas during the presentation of the report in the framework of the Convention on Climate Change in Bonn (COP23).

Two years ago–in the COP 21 in Paris–this same Convention had signed the ‘Paris Agreement” with brio and the extended applause of the national delegations of the whole planet. No doubt there was no such applause for the main news item of the WMO report, showing the effective results of that agreement: the rate of increase of CO₂ from 2015 to 2016 was the highest ever registered, that is, 3.3 parts per million per year, which indicates that the concentration of CO₂ will reach 403.3 parts per million. And the data in real time of various specific places indicate that the levels of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide will continue to increase in 2017.

The disasters increase

According to the report, these extreme phenomena affect the food security of millions of people, especially the most vulnerable. In developing countries, 26 per cent of the damage and losses caused by medium and large scale storms, floods and droughts, corresponded to agriculture (crops, livestock, fishing, agriculture and forestry).

The general risk of illness or deaths related to heat waves has constantly increased since 1980, and at the present time some 30% of the world population live in climate conditions that provoke extreme and prolonged heat waves. Between 2000 and 2016, the number of people vulnerable to episodes of heat has increased by approximately 125 million.

In 2016 some 23.5 million people were displaced as a consequence of meteorological disasters. At the end of 2017 several million people will have been displaced by floods in Asia and droughts in Africa and there will be thousands of deaths and cases of sickness due to these causes.

But not only the less developed countries have been affected. The index of accumulated cyclonic energy, that measures the total intensity and the duration of cyclones, reached this September the highest monthly intensity ever registered. In the North Atlantic, there were three hurricanes of first order and great impact that followed one another in a short interval of time: Harvey in August and Irma and Maria in September. A pluviometer located near Nederland (Texas) measured a provisional total of 1.539 mm of precipitation in seven days, which was the biggest volume ever registered by one phenomenon in the continental territory of the United States.

In mid-October, Ophelia became the first order hurricane (category 3) located over 1.000 kilometres to the Northeast of any previous hurricane of the North Atlantic. It caused important damage in Ireland, while the winds associated with this system contributed to provoke fires of great magnitude in Portugal and the Northwest of Spain.

In many zones of the Mediterranean, dry conditions predominated. The worst drought was in Italy, affecting agricultural production and causing a fall of 62% in the production of olive oil with respect to that of 2016. In addition, the highest temperatures ever registered in Italy from January to August occurred, with an anomaly of 1.31º C above the average of 1981-2010.

In various countries, high temperatures reached levels never before registered as in Australia, Pakistan, Iran, Bahrain, Oman, China, Spain, Italy, France and the United States. Particularly in South America, Santiago de Chile registered the highest known temperature, 37.4º C, which contributed to the propagation of the largest forest fires in Chilean history and destroyed 614 thousand hectares of forest. In Puerto Madryn (Argentina) the temperature reached 43.5º C, the highest registered that far South (43º S) anywhere in the world. In the other thermic extreme, intense cold and heavy snows affected parts of Argentina in July. In Bariloche, the temperature fell to -25.4º C, more than four degrees below the lowest temperature previously registered in that city.

Hope is the last thing lost

This report is devastating. Much more than previous similar reports of the WMO. The indicators of the planetary environmental crisis are worsening and there is no international agreement that would be capable of reversing it, however much applause, mutual congratulations and grandiloquent speeches with which they be announced.

And this is not the only report. A few days ago, the medical journal Lancet published another report revealing that environmental contamination, from dirty air to contaminated water, is killing more people every year than all the wars and violence in the world. More than smoking, hunger or natural disasters. More than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined. One of every six premature deaths in the world in 2015–close to nine million–can be attributed to sickness due to toxic exposition, according to the study published on Thursday, October 19. The financial cost of death, sickness and welfare related to contamination is also massive–according to the report–and costs some 4.6 trillion US dollars in annual losses, or around 6.2 % of the world economy.

Since the publication of the historical report of the Club of Rome, in 1972–The limits of growth–that announced the collapse of civilization for the year 2030 if the current insistence on economic growth policies continues, many authors (more or less contemptuously called “collapsists”) have been warning of the accuracy of these scenarios and corroborating the trajectory of the projected indicators.

Many times these analysts have used the example of the “Titanic” as an example of how our civilization, in the face of the inevitable collision with the iceberg, continued to party on board without attempting to take the necessary provisions to avoid the impact. In these moments, I am tempted to think that that moment has already passed, that our ship has already hit the iceberg and that we are seeing the first victims falling into the sea and the rest hanging onto anything that will help to keep them on the deck of the listing ship.

What is shown by the evidence of these data from these scientific reports, is the irreversibility of the process and that there is now no possibility of recovering the health of the planetary ecosystem. Global warming, the acidification of the oceans, the loss of biodiversity, desertification, the death of costal marine zones and the contamination of water, are not reversible processes. At least not in the lifetime of those who are still on the ship.

The Titanic is sinking. There will no doubt be survivors. But their lives will be condemned to floating on the pieces of wood of something that once was a splendid ship.

8/11/2017

(Translated for ALAI by Jordan Bishop)

- Gerardo Honty is an analyst with CLAES (Centro Latino Americano de Ecología Social)