2018: The Year the World Woke Up to the Climate Crisis
The world has known about climate change for a while. But in 2018, people started recognising the phenomenon as an emergency, a crisis. What changed?
Illustration by Amelia Brooks.
2018 was a year of climate extremes: extreme heat, rapidly shrinking ice caps and increasingly common wildfires–yes even the Arctic Circle in Sweden was ablaze. There was the rise of Greta Thunberg and other youth voices taking to the streets all over the globe, intense weather events ever-unfolding in the background. Some of these extremes were a sign of change, and some were a scary peek into what our future normal could be—a necessary wake-up call, in each case.
The timeline of events in 2018 is quite astounding, with the formation and rise of the Extinction Rebellion movement, creating public awareness and protesting for change early in the year. On “Rebellion Day,” with XR protesters blocked the five major bridges over the Thames in London in what was described as one of the “biggest acts of peaceful civil disobedience in the UK for decades.” The world also came to know the young, arresting Greta Thunberg. Her climate strikes resonated globally, starting alone, but sparking a vital conversation about political responses (or lack thereof) to our changing climate. Finally, we had the “ear-splitting wake-up call” from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, the landmark declaration that we needed (and still do) to make serious changes, and fast. Following on from this burst of media airtime, the UK Government declared a climate emergency in April 2019, due to the ongoing pressure from the Extinction Rebellion supporters, though it’s a wonder that it took so long.
It was also a year that broke countless records. Some of these extremes fuelled an onslaught of natural disasters that politicians and corporations couldn’t ignore. The “Beast from the East” in spring created deadly cold conditions, and temperatures across Europe plummeted. Monsoon floods in Kenya and Somalia shattered records, displacing more that 200,000 people and subsequently leading to a deadly cholera outbreak. The worst drought in 30 years hit Argentina and Uruguay, such that agricultural production and, subsequently, the economy took massive hits, causing price drives in soy and corn crops across the globe. Flooding and landslides in Rwanda. Dust storms in India strong enough to collapse houses. Extreme heat in Pakistan during Ramadan. Massive floods in Japan. The largest fire in Californian history at that point, burning almost 460,000 hectares. A bushfire season that shattered centuries-old heat records in Australia that lit up the screens of news channels worldwide. The worst floods in a century in Kerala. Droughts in Afghanistan forcing 300,000 from their homes. Typhoon Mangkhut wiped out an entire city in the Philippines… tragically the list goes on and on.
All of this to say, we started to notice. It was finally starting to sink in that we had to do something, and soon. The IPCC Special Report on Global Warming was a considerable help here; it pointed out our flaws in attempting to deal with climate change and offered terrifying projections for the future. It even gave us a plan for how we could still just about worm our way out of it, if governments, institutions, corporations and individuals chose to meaningfully act. Carbon pollution would have to be cut 45% by 2030, and come down to zero by 2050, in order to keep the warming of the globe to between 1.5 and 2 degrees compared to pre-industrial levels. The difference between 1.5 and 2 degrees, they outlined, would dramatically reduce the number of climate refugees and the impact of severe water stress and food scarcity, and radically reduce the millions of deaths worldwide from air pollution. The report was monumental for the global community, calling for “urgent and unprecedented changes”— not the kind of talk you usually get from a large, intergovernmental organisation. It was a real shock and the first time the report took a considerably more alarmist tone. Previous IPCC reports were much more sedate. “It is a line in the sand and what it says to our species is that this is the moment and we must act now”: a strong statement from Debra Roberts, co-chair of Working Group II and a contributing author to the IPCC report.
Hope was the sweeping feeling after this report came out—a good deal of worry as well—hope that there was something we could do, some other trick to try, another tactic to play. This was one of the many sparks that helped shift the global mindset that we so desperately needed.
The twenty-fourth “Conference of the Parties,” or COP for short, was held in December, a few months after the report came out. The conference had big boots to fill. Pledges were made and hopes were raised, but what actually happened?
Countries settled on the ‘rulebook’ of putting the 2015 Paris Agreement into effect, including how they would measure, report on and verify their emissions—and, ideally, their reductions. There were also debates over carbon credits and the intricacies of how those might be implemented, but that was put off to decide another day. There seemed to be discussion and compromise, but a lot of campaigners were left deeply underwhelmed with the outcomes. Given all of the media airtime and public awareness of climate change, it is of significance that we ‘woke up’ to this issue… but perhaps not everyone did. There is still a lot of work to be done, and the higher powers of the world need to recognise that their responses need to be improved, now.
However, correspondents did claim that there were far greater numbers of young people than they had ever seen at a COP conference before, making me proud to be part of this generation. Yes, we are stereotypically berated for constantly being glued to our phones, but we are making a difference, and that’s something these nagging elders could learn from.
Mohamed Nasheed, the former president of the Maldives, and their lead climate negotiator at the event, stated “almost 10 years since I was last at climate negotiations, I must say, nothing much seems to have changed…. We are still using the same old dinosaur language. Still saying the same old words. Still making the same tedious points.” This kind of powerful statement, I believe, has and will generate urgency within the younger generation to push things along and be more collaborative in getting work done. After all, the result of the IPCC report claimed that we only have 12 years before the damage becomes irreversible and we pass the tipping point (we’re already down to 9 years left!). Let’s hope we can get moving, as time is running out.
Looking back on this shift from the perspective of 2021, where does this change leave us? We are still scrambling to make these pledges and stick to them, and there have been ups and downs in our emissions globally. The fact that, in 2019, Venice’s regional council rejected a proposal to combat climate change minutes before the offices were flooded, causing them to flee, is painfully ironic; this is an undeniable demonstration of how we refuse to tackle this problem seriously when the tide is literally rising against us… we still have a lot of work to do.
The public awareness and momentum is still going strong, and we have not given up hope. Although 2018 was arguably short on strong climate action, 2021 has been dubbed a “crucial year” for climate change by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and a “make or break moment” for this crisis. There is hope as we are soon to have COP26, this year’s crucial conference that is the successor of the landmark Paris Agreement meeting in 2015. Renewables are cheaper than ever and COVID gave us a better awareness of our vulnerability on this planet… even China signed up to be carbon neutral by 2080. Despite these actions needing to occur sooner, it is better now than never.
“I want you to act as if our house is on fire,” Greta famously put it. “Because it is.”
Ellie Shearn
Ellie is a BSc Environmental Science graduate, and has a passion for wildlife conservation. She has always been fascinated by nature and is dedicated to giving the natural world its' space back. Ellie was previously a research intern in South Africa monitoring Rhinos and hopes to continue other research in the future. Through her passion for writing, she hopes to highlight the issues of the natural world, and the solutions.