Failed climate goal

For years, environmental activists - who understand the urgency of climate change far better than global policymakers - have rallied to prevent global temperatures from rising by 1.5 degrees C. Their warnings have, however, fallen on deaf ears. According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), this inaction has made overshooting 1.5 degrees C inevitable.

A recent report by the UN affiliated body titled 'Limiting Overshoot' offers this brutal reality check and outlines how "the challenge has shifted from avoiding overshoot to navigating it". The infuriating truth is that climate activists and scientists have been alerting those in positions of power to this very situation but once the time for change has passed, they can do nothing more than feign sympathy and offer condolences.

To gain an understanding of how significant a 1.5 degrees C rise would be for global climate, one simply needs to recall that water is liquid at 1oC and solid at 0 degree C. The destruction that climate change brings upon the world may not be linear enough for the world to gain time to adapt. It can absolutely be sudden, and the inevitability of overshooting 1.5 degrees C only raises that possibility further.

Countries in the Global South need to be much more vigilant of this reality. The impact of rising temperatures and, consequently, melting glaciers, collapsing ice sheets and the disruption to marine life will primarily be endured by us before it even gets the chance to move on to colder climates and richer nations. Nepal is a recent and highly devastating example of this impact.

At the very least, Pakistan must adopt its own climate policy that tackles global warming in the context of its own region. Building climate-friendly architecture and reducing carbon emissions - while also pressuring the West to curtail its own emissions - should now be nothing short of a high-level priority.