Prolonged heat waves with temperatures exceeding 40 degrees Celsius are fatal drought which decimated agricultural yields may appear to be signs of the inevitable meteorological apocalypse in which there is no help for people, but not everything is too late and irreparable. However, in order to change that, it is not enough to just install air conditioners in apartments and not move anywhere hoping for rain and cold weather, which probably won't come.
Climatologist Vladimir Đurđević tells "Vreme" that the future of climate change is not unequivocally determined and that it depends on how many more gases with the greenhouse effect will be added to the atmosphere, primarily carbon dioxide, that is, how much more fossil fuels will be consumed.
"There are two scenarios, one of which is the Paris Agreement, which was signed by all the countries of the world and according to which all countries should stop using fossil fuels by 2050." The Paris Agreement also states that the increase in global temperature should be stopped at the limit of two degrees, and the world is currently warmer by approximately one degree. By using fossil fuels until 2050, the world will allow it to warm another degree, but it will still stabilize the climate system. That proposal was made because technical, technological, economic and social analyzes have shown that the world can indeed produce all the energy it needs from renewable energy sources and not from fossil fuels. That is why it is now up to those who lead the states to fix their systems and switch to renewable energy sources," says Đurđević.
Example of Mediterranean countries
He noted that the idea of two degrees is based on a large number of analyzes that show that in a climate that is two degrees warmer than the climate in the pre-industrial period, adapting to climate change is economically and technologically feasible.
"We can live on a planet that is two degrees warmer and we can adapt to that climate, suffer less damage and build good enough flood defense systems and restructure agriculture so that it doesn't suffer from drought damage." In those two degrees, it was also taken into account whether people can adapt to the rise in global temperature. For example, it becomes unpleasant to live in Belgrade during the summer, but it is still a climate in which people can live. If the global temperature increases by two degrees, it means that in Belgrade, at the local level, the temperature will increase by three degrees, because the rise in the global temperature is not a literal reflection, so somewhere the temperature rise will be higher and somewhere lower than the average." says Đurđević.
As an example of adaptation, he cites Mediterranean countries where the temperature is higher than in Serbia and which have double working hours in the summer and do not allow outdoor work during the hottest part of the day.
"We need to start building buildings with centralized cooling systems as well, not every window having its own air conditioner, but that requires a systematic, not a chaotic, approach." In the second scenario, which does not respect the Paris Agreement, and in a world that is three or four degrees warmer, it is impossible to expect that all the buildings in Belgrade will be reshaped so that they are adequate for living in high temperatures," says Đurđević.
Droughts of unprecedented proportions
He warns that an illustrative example of what could happen if the global temperature increases by more than two degrees is this year's drought, which in the past happened in Serbia once every 10 years, and now twice or three times every 10 years.
"This means that our farmers now automatically have to count on damage twice as often as before." In a climate that is one degree warmer, they will probably get another drought in a decade, that is, three severe droughts in 10 years, so they should switch to crops that have less damage from drought or switch to agrotechnical measures that would mitigate the effects of drought. However, in a climate that is four degrees warmer, droughts like this year's will happen eight times in 10 years, and in that situation there is no adjustment," says Đurđević.
He explains that the reason why the transformation from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources is happening more slowly than it should and that it seems to people to be a fantasy rather than a reality is that in the very powerful fossil fuel industry, which often has strong ties to governments around the world and has big financial interests, there is a lot of resistance to the transformation that they want to delay and show people as unattainable.
"The heat is getting bigger and bigger, and at one point when it's going to burn to the nails it will be much more difficult to do something in five or 10 years, than now, when we have almost 30 years ahead of us, as foreseen by the Paris Agreement. We must act on time so that in those 30 years we would have effects that would stabilize the number of extreme weather events that increase over the years," concludes Đurđević.
