Lawyer Monthly Magazine - September 2021 Edition

CLIMATE CHANGE LEGISLATION Does It Go Far Enough? Early this August, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report examining the physical impact of climate change on the world. The sixth such report yet released by the UN body and compiled from over 14,000 scientific papers, the report provided an up-to-date assessment of climate change as it is currently understood. Its conclusions were bleak: human activity is “unequivocally” warming the planet, it warned, causing rapid and widespread damage to the biosphere. It also highlighted that weather extremes resulting from this warming have already been observed, and that initiatives to limit global temperature increases to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels will fall short unless carbon emissions can be deeply reduced in the coming decades. The release of the IPCC report coincided with a series of devastating floods in Europe that have been cited as lending credence to its claims regarding weather extremes. Both events also served to draw renewed attention to governmental efforts to combat the worst outcomes of climate change and the question of how effective they will be in the crucial years to come. Written by Oliver Sullivan WWW.LAWYER-MONTHLY.COM 26