Life post 1.5C

After experiencing the two hottest years on record in 2023 and 2024, the world is not showing any signs of cooling down. The UN has warned there is a 70 per cent chance that average warming from 2025 to 2029 will exceed the 1.5 degrees Celsius (C) international benchmark set at the landmark Paris Agreement on climate in 2015. Climate experts argue that the probability of breaching the 1.5C limit will likely rise to 100 per cent in the next two to three years. It appears to have taken a little more than a decade for the main promise of the Paris Agreement to be made redundant and this development has come at the cost of the world. According to climate experts, half the global population endured an additional month of extreme heat over the past year because of human-made climate change. This suffering half of the world is disproportionately based in the Global South. As is the case with many other things, the consequences of climate catastrophe are not distributed equally. Countries like Pakistan will bear the brunt of the extreme weather and its disastrous consequences despite contributing minimally to global warming.

The extreme heat and unprecedented rains sweeping the country provide a preview of what is to come. While heatwaves are no longer a novel phenomenon in Karachi, it is striking that the ongoing one came as early as May. The intense heat also appears to have exacerbated Karachi’s loadshedding woes. And while Karachi and Sindh are battling intense heat, other parts of the country have been hit by unprecedented rains and windstorms, which have led to the deaths of at least 32 people, mostly in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Summer is only just starting, so extreme heat is likely to be around for a while. As such, there is a high chance that the climate turmoil will continue or even get worse over the coming months. Multiple, prolonged weather crises across the country is what life looks like post 1.5C. The question now is whether the world will breach the 2C barrier and how much worse that will make things.

Given that extreme weather and its consequences will only become more frequent, upgrading the country’s early warning and emergency systems must be a top priority. The country also needs to get more sensible about its urban planning. Our cities are currently filled with too many buildings that fall apart too easily and are vast swathes of concrete that readily absorb heat. Urban sprawl needs to be contained, more green spaces established and buildings made that can withstand extreme weather. We also need proper emergency resource distribution mechanisms, with our food, power and water systems being grossly inadequate even in the best of times. However, these are only reactive measures, and they can only mitigate disasters rather than help us avoid them altogether. This means a lot of death, destruction and general suffering is simply inevitable at this point. The large cuts to global greenhouse gas emissions needed to actually dodge the climate crisis never materialised, and with a climate change-sceptic now helming the world’s top per-capita emitter, things are not going to get better on this front. This does not mean that Pakistan should not fight for the climate reparations it is owed by the wealthy high-emmitting countries on the global stage, only that it is unwise to count on this strategy to achieve too much. Ultimately, it will be our own efforts that make the biggest difference.