[파리협정 그후 5년] ⑦ Efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions… Change our future

2050 Carbon Neutral Important… Need for eco-friendly practices in all aspects of society, economy, and daily life

When greenhouse gases are emitted in a similar trend, extreme climate events occur once a year.

(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Eun-kyung Kim = As climate change is not just a problem of the environment, but a crisis of civilization that affects the society and economy as a whole, our future can take a very different look depending on how we deal with it.

The Intergovernmental Council on Climate Change (IPCC) said that if the global temperature rises above 2℃ by 2100, unacceptable natural disasters such as heat waves and cold waves will occur. It is necessary to limit the temperature rise to within 2℃ and even 1.5℃. It predicts that the ecosystem risk will decrease.

Our daily life will change greatly depending on whether we achieve the goal of 1.5℃ by achieving carbon neutrality in 2050, or whether the global temperature rises above 4℃ by emitting greenhouse gases as we do today.

This is a picture of the expected future situation at the end of the 21st century depending on the success of the 2050 carbon neutrality.

◇ Achieved 2050 carbon neutrality… Eco-friendly practice in all areas of society

Thanks to the achievement of carbon neutrality in 2050, including Korea and the world, humanity at the end of the 21st century is a little hot, but is living a safe and healthy life rather than worried.

Coal power plants, which were considered the main culprit of greenhouse gas emissions, have already become a relic in history.

Korea’s coal power plants were last built in Samcheok in 2024 and were all scheduled to be closed in 2054, but all were shut down early before 2050, as it was judged that doing so could not achieve 2050 carbon neutrality.

Meanwhile, the share of renewable energy such as solar power, wind power, and hydropower has increased from 7% to 80% in 2020.

In the renewable energy sector, thanks to large-scale investments and research, the technology has developed significantly, and from 2030, it has already been competitive in price compared to fossil fuels.

As a result, 100% of environmental costs were reflected, and electricity bills, which increased from 50,000 won per month in 2020 to 75,000 won per month in 2030, have long since decreased.

The increased electricity bill motivated homes to voluntarily introduce high-efficiency household appliances, and now all household appliances are produced with high efficiency in accordance with the law of supply and demand.

Thanks to the completion of the Northeast Asian Super Grid, which connects Korea with the power grids of Mongolia, Russia, China, and Japan, it is possible to jointly utilize renewable energy produced in each country, which has improved efficiency.

Since internal combustion engine cars have not been sold since 2035, only eco-friendly cars such as electric cars and hydrogen cars are used on the road. Hybrids have long since disappeared.

Fully self-driving cars and flying cars that can fly were commercialized decades ago, and hydrogen trains and subsonic capsule trains traveled between cities.

In response to climate change, industries that rapidly adopted carbon reduction technologies are highly developed, while those that have neglected to respond lost their competitiveness and disappeared.

In Korea, which is highly dependent on exports, the carbon border tax in Europe and the United States introduced in the 2020s became a turning point in accelerating the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in the industry.

Climate environment risk is also a major consideration for financial supervision and investment, so eco-friendly companies receive more preferential treatment and investment.

All factories have been converted into smart factories that incorporate information and communication technology (ICT) into the production process, and innovative materials have been commercialized instead of plastic and steel, while raw material reuse and recycling have become an essential process.

The artificial intelligence applied to the building automatically manages the system in the direction of optimizing the use of energy such as lighting, heating and cooling, and gas.

Changes can be easily found in the home.

City gas is no longer utilized, and all energy comes from electricity. Solar panels are installed in every house, and LED bulbs light up the house.

In schools, education is conducted to strengthen climate response capabilities, and thanks to learning the importance of environmental protection since childhood, energy saving and circular economy are naturally practiced in life.

Thanks to the world’s participation in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the fine dust that once hit the Korean peninsula is maintained at a level that does not affect health.

◇ Greenhouse gas emissions in a similar trend… Extreme climate events occur once a year

As a result of releasing greenhouse gas emissions in a similar trend to that of the early 21st century (RCP 8.5) without reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the global temperature has risen by 4.7℃ from the current beginning of the 21st century.

The frequency of heavy rains and heavy snow has also increased, increasing the amount of precipitation by 13.1%, and floods, which cause the most damage to people and property during disasters, also occur more and more on a larger scale.

As the precipitation increased, the overall number and duration of the drought decreased, but the intensity of the drought increased, showing a severe pattern during drought.

The number of days of heatwave was 10.1 days in 2020, but now the 35.5 days, which is more than a month, hit the Korean Peninsula. The heatwave mortality rate from 100.6 per 100,000 population in 2011 has already increased to 230.4, more than double that in 2040.

Extreme climatic phenomena such as heavy rains and heat waves, which were expected to occur once in the past 100 years, have occurred once a year since 2050.

Disasters increased by the effects of climate change in this way increase not only human life but also socioeconomic damage.

Due to rising temperatures, the pine forest, which occupies the largest scale among forests in Korea, has already disappeared by 15% in the 2080s. This is an economic loss of up to KRW 3.64 trillion, even if evaluated simply by the value of solid pine.

Rice productivity has decreased by more than 25%, and apples are no longer found in Korea.

Pests such as mosquitoes and ticks spread nationwide, causing animal-borne infectious diseases such as malaria and water-borne and food-borne infectious diseases such as food poisoning.

When the temperature in Korea rises by 1℃, the average incidence of tsutsugamushi, leptospirosis, malaria, vibrio enteritis, and bacterial dysentery increases by 4.27%.

In particular, in the 2090s, 337 cases of food poisoning have occurred on average per year, which is a 42% increase from 2002 to 2012.

The possibility of cardiovascular and respiratory diseases has also increased due to the spread of air pollutants such as ozone and fine dust.

The average water temperature in the waters around the Korean Peninsula rose to 6℃. It is much higher than the global average water temperature rise. The average sea level also increased by 65.0cm.

Due to the frequent occurrence of abnormal climate, the number of cases where aquaculture organisms such as seaweed dies in an increasing number of times, and harmful organisms such as Nomura Jellyfish and red tide are prevalent in the waters around Korea.

The damage caused by climate change is not just Korea’s.

Typhoons, floods and heat waves are hitting the world. What is even more frightening is that even reducing greenhouse gas emissions can no longer restore the ecosystem to its original state.

Such a disaster has been foretold for a long time. In its early 21st century report, the IPCC was concerned that most of these catastrophes would become a reality even if the global temperature rose only 2℃ instead of 4.7℃.

At that time, Korea set the 2030 National Greenhouse Gas Reduction Target (NDC) to reduce 24.4% of its emissions in 2017. However, that alone was not enough to achieve the 2℃ target, and other countries’ policies were not much different from Korea.

※ This article was jointly published by the Ministry of Environment’s ‘2050 Long-Term Low-Carbon Development Strategy (LEDS) Vision and Tasks’ and ‘2050 Long-Term Low-Carbon Development Strategy Public Hearing’,’Medium and Long-Term National Policy Proposal’ by the National Climate Environment Conference It was prepared based on the’Korea Climate Change Assessment Report 2020′.

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2020/12/27 08:00 sent