Defusing the climate time-bomb
Dear friend,
The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Synthesis Report was released on 20 March. It summarises the previous three sections of the Sixth Assessment Report, which assesses the current state of scientific knowledge about climate change. While the report doesn’t have any new findings, it does reiterate the need for ‘deep, rapid, and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions’ to bring down warming to the 1.5°C target. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called it a “how-to guide to defuse the climate time-bomb.”
We’ve published an Instagram explainer outlining the main findings, and its policy implications for us here in Singapore — especially where we fall short. To us, the continued warnings highlight the urgency of climate action needed, but we also believe that it is this period where we must highlight the need for a just transition for the people most vulnerable to climate change. As the report summary for policymakers puts it,
“Prioritising equity, climate justice, social justice, inclusion and just transition processes can enable adaptation and ambitious mitigation actions and climate resilient development.”
In line with our fight for workers’ rights in climate policy, our friends at Workers Make Possible will be holding a Labour Day rally at Hong Lim Park on 1 May from 3-7pm! RSVP at tinyurl.com/labourday23 to indicate your attendance and receive reminders about the rally!
As always, if you want to write for us, collaborate, or even join the movement, drop us a message on our website, Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, and we’ll get back to you!
For a better world,
SG Climate Rally
In light of International Women’s Day earlier this month, we took a deeper look at one facet of climate justice — the gendered impacts of climate change. For example, women farmers account for 50-80% of all food production but only own <10% of the land. As climate change disrupts harvests, many women will lose their sole source of income, and girls are often made to leave school to support food production efforts. Check out our post to read more about how gender inequality leads to climate change disproportionately impacting women.
Also, if you want to see the quotes from the report that we used when putting together our explainer of the IPCC synthesis report, head over to our website here!
Global News
In order to limit global warming to 1.5°C, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on ‘rich nations’ to push forward their net zero targets from 2050 to as close to 2040 as possible. He did not name any specific countries, but called on the G20 countries to pool their ‘resources and scientific capacities’ to make net zero by 2050 a reality for all countries. One country which did not get the memo was the United States, which approved the Willow oil drilling project in Alaska. While the project would bring economic benefits to nearby communities, it will also displace many others and generate enough oil to release 9.2m tons of carbon per year. At least two lawsuits have been launched against the project.
Local news
Singaporeans will have to pay at least 5 cents for each plastic carrier bag that they take from most supermarkets (about 400 outlets) from 3rd July this year. Under the Resource Sustainability (Amendment) Bill, such changes implemented aim to reduce food waste and packaging locally. This bag charge only applies to supermarket operators with an annual turnover of more than S$100 million. These operators are also required to reveal information on the number of bags issued, the proceeds received from the bag charge and how these proceeds are used. As of now, convenience store outlets are not mandated to implement the plastic bag charge. However, a recent study by Economist Impact and Nippon Foundation showed that much bolder reforms need to be done to stop a growth in plastic consumption levels, such as an aggressive global tax on virgin plastic resin. Woo Qiyun from @theweirdandwild writes in an op-ed in ST as well that while imposing a levy on the use of plastic bags may help to change our culture of depending on disposables, more upstream interventions are needed from retailers and plastic producers to eliminate the use of excessive plastic.
In February, Minister for Sustainability and the Environment Grace Fu said in Parliament that Singapore is a ‘potential claimant’ for the Loss and Damage (L&D) funding that developed nations agreed to provide after COP27. In response, Singapore Youth for Climate Action (SYCA) released a public statement that said they were ‘shocked’ at this development, and that while Singapore may be ‘renewable energy-disadvantaged due to geographical factors’, the country is still geographically fortunate to avoid most natural disasters, and is one of the richest countries in the world, hence it should not be a claimant of L&D funds that can go to other countries more in need of it. MSE subsequently said that their statement was ‘inaccurate’.
We at SGCR have analysed both the Minister’s remarks and SYCA’s statement, and believe SYCA’s statement is not inaccurate, even taking into account the context of the Minister’s remarks that Singapore is a claimant of L&D funding because it is part of the diplomatic group of ‘developing countries’. As we have said many times, Singapore can and should do much more in terms of climate impact — as opposed to the Minister’s comment that ‘we emit 0.1% of global carbon emissions, but are affected by 100% of all the impacts of climate change’. We look forward to MSE’s clarifications in the future on whether Singapore will be a claimant of L&D funding.
If reading our summary of the IPCC synthesis report is too daunting, you can watch this video summarising…the summary:
(213) Summarizing the entire IPCC report in 5 minutes featuring @ClimateAdam - YouTube
CNA has also done up a short explainer on what the IPCC sixth assessment report is, and what the main findings are. As to what the main implications of the report are, other than the obvious need to tackle climate change sooner rather than later, people have drawn differing conclusions. Kanksha in Green Is the New Black notes that the 1.5°C target is still attainable, and we have readily available and cost-effective actions to help us get there. Similarly, David Fickling in Bloomberg Opinion details how we’ve already made good progress since the fifth assessment report, thanks to cheaper renewables and green technology.
However, Kate Aronoff cautions in The New Republic that optimism alone isn’t enough–we need to start thinking of climate policies through materialist terms, and how fossil capitalists won’t give up so easily on the main source of their earnings, just because you asked them to. And in Jacobin, Matt Huber makes the case for a mass working class movement to challenge capitalist and state power that keeps fossil fuels in place.
Artificial Intelligence has been in the news a lot recently, but can ChatGPT or Bard help save us from climate change? Not quite, according to Ilana Cohen in The Nation. Sure, ChatGPT could help climate activists create better social media content or rally speeches. However, it could do the same for climate deniers, helping to misinform more people on climate policies, not to mention the significant amount of energy needed for its processing power, which contributes to greenhouse gas emissions.
Amidst recent controversies over the integrity of carbon credits, David Fogarty in The Straits Times dives deeper into the methodologies behind the standards used to certify these credits, and the future of the carbon credit market in Singapore.
Finally, this fantastic infographic from ST examines temperature trends over the past 30 years by analysing daily temperature measurements by the Meteorological Service Singapore, showing conclusively that Singapore is getting hotter over time - the average temperature in the past decade is 0.75 deg C higher than 30 years ago. If you haven’t read it yet, it's best accompanied by our guest piece last year on heat and precarity to show the very human impacts of this, beyond just personal discomfort.