The damage caused by climate change over the past year was at times so immense it was hard to comprehend.
In Pakistan alone, extreme summer flooding killed thousands, displaced millions and caused more than US$40 billion in losses. Fall floods in Nigeria killed hundreds and displaced over 1 million people.
Droughts in Europe, China and the United States dried out once-unstoppable rivers and slowed the flows of commerce on major arteries like the Mississippi and the Rhine.
In the face of these extremes, the human response was uneven at best. Consumption of coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, rebounded in 2022.
Countries such as Britain and China seemed to back away from major climate pledges. But all of this gloom came with more than a silver lining. In fact, it’s all too easy to overlook the steps towards a lower-carbon world that came about in between more attention-getting catastrophes.
Below is a list of six encouraging developments from a very momentous year, as nation after nation elected more climate-oriented governments and enacted new efforts to curb greenhouse gas.
1. President Biden’s big win changes everything
Just when it seemed that Washington was hopelessly gridlocked, in August the Biden administration and a narrow Democratic majority in Congress managed to pass the Inflation Reduction Act. Its provisions ensure that for decades to come billions of dollars will roll towards the energy transition, making it easier to deploy renewable energy, build out green technologies and subsidize consumer adoption of everything from electric cars to heat pumps.
2. The EU taxes carbon dioxide at its border
The European Union started to make good on its pledge to cut emissions by 55 percent in 2030 (from 1990 levels). The bloc’s 27 members reached a historic deal to set up the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, an emissions levy on some imports that is meant to protect Europe’s carbon-intensive industries that are forced to comply with the region’s increasingly strict rules.
3. Birds, bees and biodiversity get a big break
Just two weeks before 2022 ended, negotiators at the COP15 United Nations Biodiversity Conference in Montreal delivered a surprise win in the form of a pledge by 195 nations to protect and restore at least 30 percent of the Earth’s land and water by 2030.
4. Rich nations agree to fund loss and damage, energy transition
The biodiversity breakthrough came one month after another historic moment at a UN-backed conference. Delegates at COP27 in Egypt’s Sharm El-Sheikh reached a last-minute agreement to create a loss-and-damage fund to help developing countries impacted by climate change, a decades-long demand by nations that have contributed the least to warming of the planet.
5. Changes in leaders, change in attitudes
In November, President Joe Biden met Chinese leader Xi Jinping and reset the relationship that had been suspended by a diplomatic standoff over Taiwan. Cooperation between the top two economies (and emitters of greenhouse gas) has been essential in cementing previous climate breakthroughs like the 2015 Paris Agreement.
6. Taking methane matters more seriously
The world has been slow to understand the dangers of methane, a particularly powerful heat-trapping gas. But ever since last year’s COP26 in Glasgow, nations have been signing up to a global pledge to cut those emissions, which can come from oil and gas wells, coal seams, landfills and livestock.
SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES