EDITORIAL: A decade of difficult decisions on climate

It is almost certain now that the long-held 1.5˚ C limit for global warming, the line that should not be crossed to avoid catastrophic changes in climate and damage to ecosystems, will be reached as soon as the mid-2030s.

What becomes important now is to act with speed to keep the overshot of the 1.5˚C limit as small as possible because every increment of warming will “intensify multiple and concurrent hazards”.

This is the call to action in the report published on Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), assembled by some of the world’s top climate experts. It has been approved by governments across the world, and now they have to take responsibility for implementing the actions suggested by the scientists — and those scientists say time is running out to do so.

According to the IPCC, the choices and actions implemented by 2030 will have effects now and for thousands of years. The governments will have to make hard decisions — primarily about the use of fossil fuels, and where money gets invested. Public and private finance flows for fossil fuels still outweigh those for climate adaptation and mitigation.

Already, the report says, projected CO₂ emissions from existing fossil fuel infrastructure without additional abatement will exceed the remaining carbon budget for 1.5°C. This means that new fossil fuel developments should be out of the question, and existing coal, oil and gas projects might have to be shut down early or fitted with controversial carbon capture technology.

In SA, over the past few months, we have experienced first-hand just how difficult it can be when faced with a choice between short- and long-term benefits — especially when opting for the long-term best solution will cause more hardship in the present.

A major contributing factor to the escalation SA has experienced in load-shedding over the past six months was an incident at Kusile power station in October, when a flue duct collapsed under the weight of ash built up inside the pipe.

Eskom had to take units 1, 2 and 3 at the station offline, resulting in a loss of 2,100MW of generation capacity, which is equal to two stages of load-shedding. Last week, forestry, fisheries & the environment minister Barbara Creecy granted Eskom temporary exemption from complying with air quality regulations so that it can implement a temporary fix at Kusile.

This will mean that the lost megawatts will, according to Eskom, be restored to the grid by November this year instead of by December 2024, which is how long it would have taken to do repairs that are compliant with air pollution limits.

It is clear that SA needs urgent solutions such as this one that can reduce the impact on load-shedding in the short term. The cost of load-shedding has been staggering and it has put the economy on the road to recession while also destroying livelihoods.

However, as environmental groups have warned, the payoff in long-term effects on health include up to 1,360 deaths over time. Creecy said it was “an extraordinarily difficult decision” to make. We don’t doubt it.

It is the type of decision that leaders will have to make more often and perhaps with greater care for the future rather than the present. But what is at stake, as the report says, is our “rapidly closing window of opportunity” to secure a liveable future.