A shocking warning on day one of Cop28 – we cannot allow the world to be destroyed by global warming. We must act now

Editorial: As global leaders gather in Dubai, the World Meteorological Organization confirms what has been apparent for some time – that 2023 is going to be the warmest year since records began. The obvious and urgent need now is for action

Cop28 president Sultan al-Jaber addresses the climate summit in Dubai on Thursday (AP)

The warnings from the scientists could hardly be more stark. Life on Earth is in danger and time is running out.

As global leaders gather for the Cop28 summit in Dubai, the World Meteorological Organization confirms what has been apparent for some time – that 2023 is going to be the warmest year since records began. A shock, when the true enormity of it is taken in, but perhaps no great surprise in the context of the increasingly common freak weather observed around the world in recent times – floods in the Libyan desert, Siberian forests on fire, and biblical droughts in Australia and Africa. One of the many dangers of creeping, seemingly inexorable global warming is that the public becomes inured to the constant warnings – and shrugs in the face of extreme weather events that would have been impossible in the pre-industrial era. Like the frog in the saucepan of boiling water, we are sometimes oblivious to our worryingly changed world.

All the more reason, then, for the Cop (“Conference of Parties” to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) to convene, and to do so in the Gulf, the major export source of fossil fuels. The facts of climate change are clear; the obvious and urgent need now is for action. The public may be inured to bad news about the environment – but that is precisely because they understand what is going on and accept the science.

Only a few now try to deny the reality – and that is progress. Virtually every nation in the world is party to the Paris Agreement, and the need to get to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by the end of the century. There is a standing and famous international commitment to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5C as soon as possible.

The UK was the first major economy to enshrine “net zero” in law, the abiding achievement of Theresa May’s government. Elsewhere, substantial progress has been made, including among some of the world’s heaviest polluters – China, the United States and India. Governments, companies and individuals everywhere are committed to doing their bit. During the Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine, some of that momentum may have been lost; but if the world possesses something like a planetary consensus on anything, it is on the transcendent threat of climate change.

The arguments on climate change have been won, and the case for action accepted. There has been progress – just look at the sales of electric cars, from China to Coventry to California. Cop28 has adopted an important protocol that will raise $420m (£333m) for areas suffering the effects of global warming, such as the island Pacific nations and Bangladesh. The loss and damage fund will help the poorest and most vulnerable nations deal with the already irreversible impact of the climate crisis. It will eventually be worth $100bn a year by 2030, although developing nations say their needs already far exceed this.

But action to prevent rather than mitigate ruin is still wanting. Even now, some 30 years after the inaugural climate summit in Rio, the scale of the danger as time marches on and opportunities are missed may not be properly appreciated. Against the 1.5C target, the world is already at +1.4C. Part of that is due to the cyclical influence of El Nino, which has begun early, but it means that next year will see even more natural disasters and lives lost to them. To stay below 1.5C of global warming, emissions need to be cut by roughly 50 per cent by 2030. That is demanding by any standards.

This is no time for any country, let alone the UK which used to set such a fine example and enjoy such a strong leadership role in this mission, to go easy on its climate targets. Rishi Sunak’s decision to relax the drive to electric cars and domestic heat pumps, and expand fossil fuel production, is disappointing, if not disastrous, in the light of the emergency we now face. Britain may be only a minor source of CO2 emissions, even allowing for its offshoring of so much industrial activity, but the great majority of nation states could make the same plea, and it would be just as useless.

The whole rationale for the Paris Accords and the Cop process is that every country has to commit to action. No country can opt out of climate change. Aside from Elon Musk and a few of his disciples, no one wants to evacuate to Mars. Sadly, geopolitical tensions mean that Presidents Biden, Xi and Putin won’t be attending, a reminder that international consensus is precious and fragile.

So the time is now to redouble our efforts. According to the UN, keeping the temperature rise on Earth below 1.5C, rather than 2C, would mean: 10 million fewer people lose their homes to rising sea levels; a 50 per cent reduction in the number of people experiencing water insecurity; and a reduction in coral reef loss from 99 per cent to 70 per cent.

At 2C and above climate change becomes not just unstoppable but irreversible, even with hoped-for carbon reduction technologies; and the planet’s delicate climate and weather systems will start to fly out of control. As glaciers melt and sea levels rise, whole countries will disappear under water. Desertification across Africa and South America will accelerate. Nations will go to war over water supplies and for food. Economic dislocation will undermine democracies and hitherto peaceful stable communities. Among other things, these trends will produce huge movements of desperate climate refugees.

In the “Anthropocene epoch” of man-made climate disruption, mankind faces the greatest challenge of all – to save life on Earth. It is, as is often remarked to the point of cliche, “existential”. The sheer scale of what needs to be done is daunting – but the world is not yet lost.