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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones - this is 7am.

Last week, scientists issued a code red report for humanity. A desperate attempt to force political leaders to take action and stop runaway climate change. That report, published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body responsible for assessing the science on climate change, sent shock waves around the world.

Australian scientist, Joëlle Gergis, was one of the lead authors and today she tells us what it says about the future of our planet and how we can all maintain some hope.

It’s Monday, August 16.

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RUBY:

Hi, Joelle, it's Ruby.

JOËLLE:

Hi, Ruby, it's nice to talk to you again.

RUBY:

I was just thinking it's been probably six months or so since we last spoke. You were sort of in the middle of writing the report the last time we spoke.

JOËLLE:

Yeah, it's amazing. It's quite surreal to see that the report is out now and it's been an incredibly long six months, I must say.

RUBY:

How does it feel to be out the other side?

JOËLLE:

Pretty exhausted. It's been such a huge process. But I guess underneath the exhaustion, I feel incredibly proud of what our community has managed to achieve. And we really did work around the clock over the past three years to develop the most comprehensive report on climate change that humanity has ever compiled.

Archival Tape -- Newsreader 1

“Well, the alarm bells are deafening”

Archival Tape -- Newsreader 2

“A dire warning and a stark reality”

Archival Tape -- Newsreader 1

“United Nations, today, issuing an urgent call for action”

RUBY:

Can you tell me a bit more about that work that goes into compiling the report, what it's like being a part of a team working on something as big as this?

JOËLLE:

So over these past three years, there have been over 200 scientists from 66 different countries around the world. And we've read over 14, 000 individual scientific research papers that have been published since our last report came out in 2013. And so there are 13 chapters involved in the report and I was involved in a chapter which specifically looked at water cycle changes. So, we had people from Colombia, France, Russia, Cameroon, China, Israel, India, Australia, New Zealand, just to name a few of the people. SO it was very much a United Nations process. But we all actually volunteered our time. So we don't get paid for writing this report.

RUBY:

And can you tell me then a bit more about your chapter on water cycle changes? What were the findings?

JOËLLE:

Yeah, so after evaluating evidence from all over the world, we were able to conclude that human-caused climate change is now driving changes in the global water cycle since at least the 1950s. And this is quite a strong result because for, really, the first time, we're also able to say, well, climate change is also influencing the water cycle. And we found that a warmer climate intensifies both very wet and very dry weather conditions. So it influences the impacts of things like extreme flooding and drought across many parts of the world.

Archival Tape -- Newsreader 1

“Fierce floods sweep through Germany with catastrophic consequences, rivers burst their banks after relentless rains. Water races down small town roads, inundating entire areas.”

JOËLLE:

Recently observed extremes like these devastating conditions we've seen in northern Europe, China and India just in recent weeks are exactly what we expect as the climate continues to warm up.

Archival Tape -- Newsreader 2

“Causing these apocalyptic scenes to unfold. Floodwaters cascading into this subway station, a resident seen being swept away by the water. Rescue workers put kindergarteners into plastic tubs so they can float as they're taken to safety.”

JOËLLE:

On the other side of the other side of that coin is that warming over land is also driving increases in evapotranspiration. So that's the combination of processes of evaporation over the ocean and the land and also the release of water from leaves. And this is increasing the severity of drought in places like the Mediterranean and western North America.

Archival Tape -- Newsreader

“California has rarely witnessed wildfires on a scale like this. For nearly a month, they burn their way through an area the size of London.”

JOËLLE:

As these regions continue to warm and to dry out, we see extreme fire weather conditions that are becoming more common. So the summer wildfires that are currently devastating places like Turkey, Greece and California are once again, precisely what scientists expect to see as the climate continues to warm.

Archival Tape -- Newsreader

“This is the wasteland left in its wake, nearly all but destroyed”

JOËLLE:

Releasing our report against the backdrop of these ongoing natural disasters that are happening all over the world right now, it makes me hope that people no longer need to use their imagination to picture what climate change looks like because it's here right now and it's part of the lived experience of every single person alive on the planet.

RUBY:

And Joelle, the IPCC report makes several conclusions, including that we are experiencing warming unseen in 125,000 years. That extreme rainfall and drought, as you say, will dramatically increase in frequency and intensity, that carbon dioxide levels are the highest that they've been in at least two million years. This is all pretty frightening stuff. But when you think about the report, can you tell me what the most confronting part of the conclusions are for you?

JOËLLE:

Yeah, that's a good question. I think this IPCC report is probably best described in the words of the UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, and he said that the report is a code red for humanity. So the scientific evidence could not be any clearer. I mean, it is now an established fact that virtually all of the warming we've experienced since pre-industrial times has been caused by human activities. So It's now indisputable that the burning of fossil fuels is cooking the planet. And for me, it's confronting to realise that climate change is now impacting every part of the world. So every continent and every ocean. And another one of the most confronting conclusions from the report is that all the climate models scenarios assessed in the IPCC show us breaching the Paris agreement’s 1.5 degree target in the early 2030s. So that's just 10 years away and will probably breach two degrees some time around about the middle of the century.

In a nutshell, unless there are really immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions the Paris agreement targets are beyond reach, and it's increasingly clear that we are going to overshoot these targets. And they're really real and very serious implications as a result of that.

RUBY:

We will be back in a moment

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RUBY:

Joelle, why is it that the target of 1.5 degrees of warming is such a significant milestone and what does it mean for us as a planet that we are predicted to exceed it now by 2030?

JOËLLE:

Yeah. So the Paris agreement targets were specifically developed to avoid what they called dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. And this has been determined to lie somewhere under two degrees, but as close to one point five degrees as possible. So we know that every fraction of a degree of warming really matters. And so the whole goal of the Paris Agreement targets is to try and minimise the severity of the impacts. And we've already seen unprecedented extremes starting to play out more frequently with just one degree of global warming. So I think it's an interesting exercise to think about. Well, if this is what we see with one degree of warming, what will the impacts be like under two, three, four degrees of global warming?

RUBY:

Mmhmm. And is that where we are headed, Joelle? If so, what will that be like?

JOËLLE:

Right now, for example, current pledges for 2030 have us on track to warm between around 2.1 and 3.5 degrees by the end of the century. So what that means in real terms is that at sustained levels of warming between, say, two and three degrees, there's emerging evidence to suggest that the Greenland and the West Antarctic ice sheets could be lost almost completely and irreversibly over thousands of years. So with two degrees of warming, the committed global sea level rise is about two to six metres over the next 2000 years. And with three degrees of warming, sea level could rise by up to four to 10 metres over the same time period. So these are phenomenal figures to try and get your head around.

And so in the context of Australia, for example, under moderate and or high emissions scenarios, our sandy shoreline. So our beaches on the east coast of Australia are projected to retreat by more than 100 metres. And it's hard to get your head around that if you think about, you know, standing along the coastline of the place that you love in eastern Australia, that by the end of the century we could see around 100 metres of that shoreline disappear as sea level rises. So for me as a scientist, the most confronting thing about this report is just how far away the political response has been to the escalating severity of the situation.

Archival Tape -- Scott Morrison

“Well, good morning, everyone. I'm joined by the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction to address the very serious issue of the IPCC report.”

RUBY:

I did want to ask you about that, about the response that we've seen to the report in the days since it's been released, because, as you say, the report itself, it is a stark warning. So how does the reaction from our leaders match up to that gravity?

Archival Tape -- Scott Morrison

“You know, we are very aware of the risks that are set out in the IPCC report, but I'm also very aware of the significant changes that are happening in the global economy”.

JOËLLE:

Look, I think it's incredibly disappointing to be one of the last developed countries in the world to be moving strongly when it comes to climate change. And it is deeply disappointing that we continue to go in the opposite direction to all the other progressive parts of the world.

Archival Tape -- Scott Morrison

“Quite the contrary, I understand and accept that the advanced world, the advanced economies of the world have developed their economies over a long time, principally, on the basis of fossil fuel industries. That is accepted”

JOËLLE:

We've done our job and it really now is up to the government. And we know that to be able to stabilise the Earth's climate, we need to get to net zero emissions by no later than 2050.

Archival Tape -- Scott Morrison

“And a point I make, particularly to those overseas, that's one of the biggest movers in transforming how they move to a net zero business is our mining and resources industry”

JOËLLE:

If we're really serious about this to turn this around, we need to begin to phase out the burning of fossil fuels immediately. And all I will say is that this is completely inconsistent with the Australian government's current policies that continue to rely on fossil fuels.

And I feel that if this IPCC report doesn't make a difference, then nothing ever will because we've laid it out. It's as clear as we possibly can be. And I think that really the scientific community has... we've done our job.

RUBY:

Hmm. And I mean, the findings, they are distressing. I've spoken to a lot of people in the past few days who felt pretty hopeless seeing it come out. I also had that feeling as well. I experienced that emotion. So, I mean, is there anything that does make you feel hopeful and stay motivated to get to where we need to be?

JOËLLE:

Yeah, look, that's a really important point, and I think, you know, in the aftermath of the release of the report, it's really easy to feel very crushed by the barrage of bad news and these unbearable realities that are out there. But I guess what I could say is that as a scientist involved in this report, you know, I really want to say that humans have the inherent goodness to turn this around. So over the past three years, you know, over 200 scientists from all over the world worked around the clock during a deadly pandemic to complete this report. We volunteered our time. And we did this because we care and we care deeply about protecting our extraordinary planet and all life on Earth. And many of us really understand that we are the generation that is likely to witness the destabilisation of the Earth's climate and that the people that are alive today will determine the fate of humanity. So ultimately, we just have a choice to make about...you can either choose to be a person that restores someone else's faith in humanity and you can do what you can, where you can, or you can just sort of fall into this whole abyss of cynicism and despair. And to me, it's really as simple as that. And the thing I should also mention here is that our political leaders are there because we put them there, we vote them in. So there's a lot of agency out in the community when we think about what we can do as individuals. This is a really important moment to realise that we live in a time where everyone, everywhere is needed. And this is not going anywhere in terms of this problem is not going away. And we really need to really step up and realise that there's still so much worth saving. And how bad we let things get is still up to us. We can turn this around, but it requires unprecedented cooperation on a global scale. That's a really difficult thing. I appreciate that, but it is possible.

RUBY:

Thank you so much for your time and thank you for your work on this report.

JOËLLE:

Thanks a lot. Thanks for having me.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today…

The New South Wales Premier, Gladys Berejilkian, has described the state’s recent spike in case numbers as an ‘absolute wake up call’ and pleaded with residents to stay home and get vaccinated. The state recorded 415 new cases and 4 additional deaths on Sunday.

And the federal government has secured an extra 1 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, bought from Poland. Half of the vaccines will be directed to the hardest hit areas of Sydney.

I’m Ruby Jones. This is 7am - see you tomorrow.

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