As the world virtually goes through the first quarter of the 21st century, on one hand climate change crisis, and with it the ‘Pandemicene’ phenomenon have continued to affect daily lives in more and more significant way, while on the other hand, the march of Neoliberalism over the last four decades or so, has meant that public policy, which is deeply entrenched in ‘market fundamentalism’ has allowed profiteering to take precedence over economic decisions that would have otherwise allowed reaching both productive and allocative efficiencies, including making global economy more resilient against existential threats like climate change.
Although the climate change crisis has unfolded very quickly over the last decade or so, a January 6 published article ‘Climate models can’t explain what’s happening to earth’ in ‘The Atlantic’ indicated that the actual pace climate change is happening is likely to be much higher than being indicated by earlier climate models. The article indicated in this regard ‘Today’s climate models very accurately describe the broad strokes of Earth’s future. But warming has also now progressed enough that scientists are noticing unsettling mismatches between some of their predictions and real outcomes. Kai Kornhuber, a climate scientist at Columbia University, and his colleagues recently found that, on every continent except Antarctica, certain regions showed up as mysterious hot spots, suffering repeated heat waves worse than what any model could predict or explain. Across places where a third of humanity lives, actual daily temperature records are outpacing model predictions, according to forthcoming research from Dartmouth’s Alexander Gottlieb and Justin Mankin. …At the same time, now that the models are running up against the reality of dramatic climate change, some of their limits are showing. … But models are, even now, less capable of accounting for secondary effects of those emissions that no one saw coming, and that now seem to be driving important change.’ This only calls for all the more urgency to tackle climate change in a vigorous way, both in terms of much more availability of climate finance, and making greater efforts towards reaching more accurate, and wider-encompassing climate models.
Resultantly, the world saw the ballooning of a SARS– a coronavirus– epidemic, into a full blown Covid-19 pandemic in just two decades, on one hand, while the intensity, and frequency of climate change induced catastrophes increased over time, as rising global warming meant that almost every next year has been hotter than before, and breaking record of being the hottest year in the recorded history of global climate temperature. For instance, the catastrophic floods in Pakistan in 2022, inundated one-third of the country, causing serious damage to life and livelihood – with billions of dollars worth of damage caused.
Similarly, the recent wildfires in Los Angeles have also been catastrophic, with strong footprint of climate change, as pointed out by a January 9 published article ‘The role of climate change in the catastrophic 2025 Los Angeles fires’ as follows: ‘The New Year has rung in with one of the most horrific wildfire events in world history: an urban firestorm in the Los Angeles metro area that has killed at least five people and reduced thousands of homes to smoking rubble. …The main way that climate change worsens wildfires is by drying out vegetation. Prolonged heat turns forests and grasslands into tinder, fueling faster, more intense burns. In the case of this week’s fires, vegetation growth in early 2024 was enhanced by a wetter-than-average winter in Southern California. But during the summer of 2024, California experienced its hottest summer on record.’
The intensity, and frequency of climate change induced catastrophes increased over time, as rising global warming meant that almost every next year has been hotter than before, and breaking the record of being the hottest year in the recorded history of global climate temperature. For instance, the catastrophic floods in Pakistan in 2022, inundated one-third of the country, causing serious damage to life and livelihood – with billions of dollars worth of damage caused.
Having said that, there is a serious lack of commitment being shown by a number of countries, including those countries which have had a large carbon footprint. A January 7, Guardian published article ‘World’s climate fight needs fundamental reform, UN expert says: ‘Some states are not acting in good faith’’ indicated in this regard ‘The international effort to avert climate catastrophe has become mired by misinformation and bad faith actors, and must be fundamentally reformed, according to a leading UN climate expert. Elisa Morgera, the UN special rapporteur on climate change, said the annual UN climate summits and the consensus-based, state-driven process is dominated by powerful forces pushing false narratives and by tech fixes that divert attention from real, equitable solutions for the countries least responsible and most affected. “The current climate regime was built in a way, maybe unconsciously, that locked in an ineffective approach that is blind to the disproportionate harms of climate change– and increasingly climate solutions– and the disproportionate benefits that the current situation is accruing to very few states and very few individuals,” said Morgera, in an exclusive interview with the Guardian.’
To build on the UN special rapporteur’s argument, the recently held COP29 meetings in Baku, Azerbaijan, resulted in a very lukewarm consensus shown by countries, whereby unlike the well-researched need, and demand by developing countries that rich, advanced countries provided at least more than a trillion dollars annually to developing countries as climate finance, commitment to the tune of $300 million will be provided annually by 2035. In this regard, an article ‘COP29 ends with deal on climate finance after bitter fight’ published in Bloomberg ‘Rich countries have pledged to provide at least $300 billion annually by 2035, through a wide variety of sources, including public finance as well as bilateral and multilateral deals. The agreement also calls on parties to work toward unleashing a total of $1.3 trillion a year, with most of it expected to come through private financing.’ Given the fast-unfolding nature of the climate change crisis, this amount is indeed nothing more than paltry.
