The World Bank’s shock therapy on climate change
The World Bank has just released a major new report on climate change, and it’s designed to be startling. The report tries to understand what a world that is 4 degrees Celsius warmer would look like, and it sketches a grim picture: Without further commitments and action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the world is ...
The World Bank has just released a major new report on climate change, and it's designed to be startling. The report tries to understand what a world that is 4 degrees Celsius warmer would look like, and it sketches a grim picture:
The World Bank has just released a major new report on climate change, and it’s designed to be startling. The report tries to understand what a world that is 4 degrees Celsius warmer would look like, and it sketches a grim picture:
Without further commitments and action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the world is likely to warm by more than 3°C above the preindustrial climate. Even with the current mitigation commitments and pledges fully implemented, there is roughly a 20 percent likelihood of exceeding 4°C by 2100….
A 4°C world is likely to be one in which communities, cities and countries would experience severe disruptions, damage, and dislocation, with many of these risks spread unequally. It is likely that the poor will suffer most and the global community could become more fractured, and unequal than today.
In his introduction to the report, Bank president Jim Kim writes, "[i]t is my hope that this report shocks us into action." It’s well timed in that respect. The Bank report (which was mostly researched and written by the Potsdam Institute) comes at a moment when climate change has new momentum in the United States and just days before the next session of the UN-sponsored climate change negotiations.
This latest iteration of that long-running process takes place in Doha and will focus on streamlining what has become a byzantine negotiating process and pushing states to comply with committments already made. Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN body overseeing the negotiations, described the broad challenge to me recently this way:
A lot of the work of Doha is to take the issues that have been under design or negotiation and put them into implementation. Governments are completely aware of the fact that they are behind schedule, that science demands speedy and scaled-up action and not what we have right now.
The Bank report appears to be a very deliberate attempt to infuse those sluggish negotiations with a greater sense of urgency.
David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist
More from Foreign Policy
Saudi-Iranian Détente Is a Wake-Up Call for America
The peace plan is a big deal—and it’s no accident that China brokered it.
The U.S.-Israel Relationship No Longer Makes Sense
If Israel and its supporters want the country to continue receiving U.S. largesse, they will need to come up with a new narrative.
Putin Is Trapped in the Sunk-Cost Fallacy of War
Moscow is grasping for meaning in a meaningless invasion.
How China’s Saudi-Iran Deal Can Serve U.S. Interests
And why there’s less to Beijing’s diplomatic breakthrough than meets the eye.
Sign up for Morning Brief
Foreign Policy’s flagship daily newsletter with what’s coming up around the world today. Delivered weekdays.
By submitting your email, you agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use and to receive email correspondence from us. You may opt out at any time.
