In the 19,000-word communiqué issued by G7 leaders on the last day of the Hiroshima meeting, from May 19 to 21, ‘climate’ comes after perceived priority subjects like the war in Ukraine, security related to nuclear armament, state of economy, supply of food and financing of the quality infrastructure.

The reference to climate and clean energy is habitually sprinkled and spread all over the latter part of the extensive communiqué. However, there is no proof or evidence, whatsoever if the world leaders of G7 had at all heeded the stark warnings issued by WMO just two days before the start of the Hiroshima meeting. That WMO report was based on field observations and came after IPCC’s AR6, issued in Q1 2023. The G7’s cold shoulder to the WMO report was exactly the way the citizens of Hiroshima overlooked the warning in ‘LeMay’ leaflets dropped by American planes before the first ever atom bomb was dropped on their city.

Dr Rajendra Shende

The leaders of G7 left Japan after a lot of self-honouring messages and habitual statements, ensuring that their communiqué encompassed the usual encyclopaedia of global challenges. And the priority of global challenges was, at best, jumbled. In short, it was plainly evident that despite being in Hiroshima for three days, they did not bother to read the ‘LeMay leaflets’ about the ticking climate bomb. Indeed, there was no shade of remorse apparent in the communiqué that it is the historical emissions in G7 countries that have taken the planet to the cliff. Instead of launching a rapid war on their own greenhouse gas emissions, they continued to mouth statements of commitments and promises, which they have never kept in the past, and are not expected to keep in the future. Even the issues that are at the heart of COP28, like climate justice, fundamental change in lifestyle and super urgency to support the latest positive investment trends for clean energy, were missing.

Before the bombing of Hiroshima, under the orders of American General Curtis LeMay, millions of leaflets were dropped from American military planes, warning the citizens of the grave consequences of weapons of mass destruction. The leaflets informed of urgent precautions like safe shelter or evacuation. That was in August 1945.

The residents of Hiroshima ignored the leaflets, considering them as part of routine alarms during the war period and as enemy’s tactics of scaremongering. There was also complacency that ‘governments are there to take care’. Simply put, the citizens snoozed!

And then Enola Gay happened – and the sky literally came falling. The city was largely flattened by a single bomb that fell. And the world for the first time came to know the meaning of ‘razing a city to the ground’.

The G7 Summit at Hiroshima was indeed a unique opportunity for the G7 leaders and eight other invitees to take measures on a war-footing by taking note of the WMO leaflets. Coming just six months before COP28, advance declaration of war against climate crisis would have been the most appropriate way to begin the G7 communiqué.

So, what does the WMO report state?

Released on May 17 2023, the WMO report is similar to the ‘LeMay’ leaflets of 1945. The contents of the report are a dire warning of the ticking climate bomb. The official title of the report is rather banal and neutral – Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update. It provides a synthesis of the global annual and decadal (5-10 years) predictions, provided by several of the WMO’s centres spread across the world. Sample this: “There is a 66% likelihood that the annual global average temperature between 2023 and 2027 will be more than 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels for at least one year.” The report further states that there exists a 98% likelihood that at least one of the next five years will be the warmest on record in human history. This is, indeed, the first time that any UN organisation has warned humanity with such a definite prediction amidst chaotic atmospheric chemistry.

Other significant observations in the WMO report have to do with El Niño, the impact of which increases global temperatures in the year after it develops. It also warns that the Arctic temperature would be warming in a disproportionately high manner, relative to the 1991-2020 average, and is predicted to be more than three times as large in the next five winters in the northern hemisphere, affecting Europe, Japan and North America. The WMO report also states that the predicted precipitation patterns for 2023, relative to the 1991-2020 average, would be extreme high and extreme low.

Unfortunately, unlike Hiroshima in 1945, there is no possibility of evacuating citizens to protect them against the ticking climate bomb. The fact is that there is no Planet B, where the climate-affected population from Planet A could be evacuated to. Even within Planet A, our Earth, a number of governments are not willing to accept the current climate evacuees, in spite of the fact that those governments are the most responsible for the climate crisis. And those seeking refuge have contributed the least to the climate change. The perennial inaction till now is predicted to continue.

What should worry everyone after WMO’s latest ‘LeMay’ warning is the sheer observation that global temperatures are likely to enter into ‘uncharted territory’. This will have far-reaching repercussions for health, food security, water management and the planet’s ecosystem. We need to be prepared, as noted by WMO’s Secretary General, Petteri Talas.

The warning is not only coming with unusual certainty, but there is also a clearer message that the world is failing in its pursuit to meet the targets of the Paris Climate Agreement. To refresh the memory, the Paris Agreement called all the countries to nearly halve the global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2030, as compared to pre-industrial level, and to limit the global temperature increase in this century to 2 degrees C while pursuing efforts to limit the increase even further to 1.5 degrees C. If we fail to achieve this, the adverse and catastrophic impacts and related losses and damages would be beyond our wildest imagination.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has already stated in its special report that climate-related risks for global warming are higher at 1.5 degrees C than at 2 degrees C and are more life threatening, particularly to small island countries and least developing countries.

“WMO is sounding the alarm that we will breach the 1.5 degrees C level on a temporary basis with increasing frequency,” Taalas said while releasing the report. The chance of ‘temporarily exceeding 1.5 degrees C’ has risen steadily since 2015, when that chance was close to zero. For the years between 2017 and 2021, there was a 10% chance of exceedance. “Global mean temperatures are predicted to continue on their rising spree, moving us further and further away from the climate we are used to,” the WMO states in its report.

Fortunately for us, there are other leaflets that clearly show how to defuse this ticking time bomb. Those leaflets come from the latest report from the International Energy Agency (IEA), also released in May 2023. Following are the messages from the IEA leaflets:

• Clean energy investment is moving fast – faster than many would realise. Clean technologies are pulling away from fossil fuels. Five years ago, global energy investment was USD 2 trillion, of which USD 1 trillion was for clean energy and USD 1 trillion was for fossil fuels. Today, USD 1 trillion is for fossil fuels and USD 1.7 trillion is for clean energy.
• The rise of clean energy is particularly obvious in solar power investment. For the first time in history, the investment made in solar is higher than that going to oil production. It may be symbolic, but it is very important, because it shows the tide turning.
• Clean energy investment has accelerated well beyond spending on gas, coal and oil, as governments become increasingly concerned about developing secure, homegrown energy sources.
• Low-emission electricity technologies are expected to account for almost 90% of investment in power generation. Renewables, electric vehicles, nuclear power, grids, storage, low-emission fuels, efficiency improvements and global heat pump sales (entering into double-digit annual growth) are all witnessing a steep rise.

Rapid expansion of renewables has only one constraint: The connection to the power-grid. That constraint may possibly thwart the meteoric rise of investment in clean energy.

The G20 meeting, in September 2023, would hopefully take serious note of LeMay leaflets from WMO, and the opportunity lost in G7 could be seized by writing and acting on a manual on ‘How to defuse the ticking time bomb’, based on trends in renewable energy, as informed by the IEA’s World Investment Report.

The G20 represents 85% of global GDP, 75% of international trade, two-thirds of the world’s population, 80% of global greenhouse emissions and 80% of the world’s forest cover. I strongly suggest that the G20 invites COP28 President, H.E. Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber and UNFCCC Executive Secretary along with the Chairman of the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) Association to its main meeting and starts actions to diffuse the ticking Climate Bomb.

Dr Rajendra Shende is Former Director, UNEP; Coordinating Lead Author of IPCC-2007, which won the Nobel Peace Prize; and Founder Director, Green TERRE Foundation. He may be reached at shende.rajendra@gmail.com. He writes exclusively for Climate Control Middle East magazine.