El planeta en llamas: récords de calor en los océanos

The WMO report is essentially a scorecard, and the score is not good.

Mira, en Europa intentamos hacer cosas.

In Europe we've tried to do things.

La Unión Europea redujo sus emisiones en los últimos años.

The European Union reduced its emissions in recent years.

Pero Europa es solo una parte del mundo.

But Europe is only one part of the world.

Sin China, sin India, sin Estados Unidos, los esfuerzos europeos no son suficientes para cambiar los números globales.

Without China, without India, without the United States, European efforts aren't enough to change the global numbers.

I mean, as an American I feel the weight of that statement.

The U.S.

has been in and out of every major climate agreement for thirty years.

It's embarrassing.

And not the embarazado kind.

[laughs] No, no, Fletcher, ese tipo de embarazo es diferente.

[laughs] No, Fletcher, that kind of embarrassment is different.

Pero sí, la falta de compromiso de Estados Unidos es un problema serio.

But yes, the lack of commitment from the United States is a serious problem.

El Acuerdo de París necesita a los países más grandes.

The Paris Agreement needs the biggest countries.

Sin ellos, es solo un documento.

Without them, it's just a document.

So let's talk about what this actually looks like on the ground.

Because ocean heat content isn't just an abstract number.

It has very direct consequences for weather, for storms, for sea levels.

Walk me through that.

Bueno, primero, el calor en los océanos hace que los huracanes y las tormentas sean más fuertes.

First, ocean heat makes hurricanes and storms stronger.

El agua caliente es como gasolina para una tormenta.

Warm water is like fuel for a storm.

Cuando un huracán pasa sobre agua muy caliente, se hace más grande y más peligroso muy rápido.

When a hurricane passes over very warm water, it gets bigger and more dangerous very quickly.

We saw that vividly in the Gulf of Mexico in recent years.

Storms that would have been Category 2s becoming Category 4s almost overnight because the water temperature was so elevated.

Meteorologists were genuinely surprised by the rate of intensification.

Y después está el nivel del mar.

And then there's sea level.

Cuando el agua del océano se calienta, se expande.

When ocean water heats up, it expands.

Ocupa más espacio.

It takes up more space.

Además, el hielo de los polos y de los glaciares se derrite y ese agua también va al océano.

On top of that, ice at the poles and in glaciers melts and that water also goes into the ocean.

El nivel del mar sube por las dos razones.

Sea levels rise for both reasons.

The thing is, even a modest sea level rise, say half a meter over fifty years, sounds manageable in the abstract.

But for low-lying cities, for delta regions, for Pacific island nations, that's an existential number.

It's not a future problem.

It's already happening.

Sí, yo viví en Londres y recuerdo que la gente hablaba mucho de las inundaciones en Bangladés o en las islas del Pacífico como si fueran problemas muy lejanos.

I lived in London and I remember people talked about flooding in Bangladesh or the Pacific islands as if they were very distant problems.

Pero en España también vemos los efectos del clima.

But in Spain we also see the effects.

La sequía en el sur es cada vez peor.

The drought in the south gets worse every year.

Spain is actually a fascinating case study here.

Because you're talking about a country that's genuinely on the front line of climate change in Europe.

The Mediterranean basin is warming at about one and a half times the global average rate.

Es verdad, y lo sentimos.

It's true, and we feel it.

En Madrid, cuando era niño, nevaba en invierno con más frecuencia.

In Madrid, when I was a child, it snowed in winter more often.

Ahora es raro.

Now it's rare.

Los veranos son más largos y más calientes.

Summers are longer and hotter.

Esto no es una opinión, es algo que la gente mayor en España recuerda muy bien.

This isn't an opinion, it's something older people in Spain remember very clearly.

Right, so you have living memory as evidence.

That's actually one of the most powerful arguments, I think, more powerful than any graph.

When your grandmother tells you the olive harvest used to happen in November and now it happens in September, that's data with a human face.

Exactamente.

Exactly.

Y en el Mediterráneo, el océano también cambió.

And in the Mediterranean, the ocean also changed.

Los pescadores del sur de España dicen que ahora encuentran especies de peces que antes vivían en África.

Fishermen in southern Spain say they now find species of fish that used to live in Africa.

Peces tropicales en el Mediterráneo.

Tropical fish in the Mediterranean.

Es extraño y preocupante.

It's strange and worrying.

Here's the historical context I keep coming back to.

There have been periods of rapid climate change in Earth's history before.

The Younger Dryas, for example, was a sudden cooling event about twelve thousand years ago.

But those changes happened over centuries.

What's different now is the speed.

La velocidad es el problema.

Speed is the problem.

Los animales y las plantas pueden adaptarse a cambios lentos.

Animals and plants can adapt to slow changes.

Pero cuando el clima cambia muy rápido, muchas especies no pueden adaptarse.

But when the climate changes very quickly, many species can't adapt.

Los humanos también tenemos problemas cuando los cambios son muy rápidos.

Humans also struggle when changes come too fast.

I covered a famine in the Horn of Africa back in the early 2000s, and even then, the scientists I spoke to were drawing direct lines between changing rainfall patterns and food insecurity.

That was twenty-plus years ago.

The link between climate disruption and human suffering is not new.

Y la situación empeoró.

And the situation got worse.

La sequía en África, las inundaciones en Asia, los incendios en el sur de Europa, todo esto pasó más veces y con más intensidad en los últimos años.

Droughts in Africa, floods in Asia, wildfires in southern Europe, all of this happened more often and with more intensity in recent years.

El informe de la OMM confirma lo que muchas personas ya experimentaron.

The WMO report confirms what many people already experienced firsthand.

So let's push into the implications, because I think this is where the conversation gets uncomfortable.

The WMO report isn't just describing a problem.

It's implicitly indicting the global response.

Thirty years of climate diplomacy, and the oceans are still heating at record rates.

Mira, la diplomacia climática hizo algunas cosas importantes.

Climate diplomacy did some important things.

El Protocolo de Kioto, el Acuerdo de París, las conferencias COP.

The Kyoto Protocol, the Paris Agreement, the COP conferences.

Pero siempre fue demasiado lenta y los compromisos de los países fueron demasiado pequeños.

But it was always too slow and the commitments from countries were too small.

El problema creció más rápido que las soluciones.

The problem grew faster than the solutions.

I mean, there's an argument, and it's not a crazy one, that the structure of international climate negotiations actually makes decisive action harder.

Because every country has veto power over ambition.

You end up with the lowest common denominator.

Es que tienes razón en parte, pero la alternativa es peor.

You're partly right, but the alternative is worse.

Sin negociaciones internacionales, cada país hace lo que quiere.

Without international negotiations, every country does whatever it wants.

Al menos con el Acuerdo de París hay un marco común.

At least with the Paris Agreement there's a common framework.

Es imperfecto, pero es algo.

It's imperfect, but it's something.

No, you're absolutely right about that.

The counterfactual matters.

And I think the renewable energy transition is actually a genuine success story that gets lost in all the bad news.

Solar costs dropped ninety percent in fifteen years.

That's extraordinary.

Sí, la energía solar y la energía eólica crecieron mucho.

Yes, solar and wind energy grew a lot.

España produce ahora una parte importante de su electricidad con energías renovables.

Spain now produces an important part of its electricity from renewables.

Pero el problema es que también consumimos más energía en total.

But the problem is that we also consume more total energy.

La eficiencia mejoró, pero el consumo subió.

Efficiency improved, but consumption went up.

The rebound effect.

It's one of the more frustrating ironies in environmental economics.

You make cars more fuel-efficient, people drive more.

You make flights cheaper through better technology, people fly more.

Efficiency gains get consumed by increased demand.

La verdad es que es un problema de comportamiento, no solo de tecnología.

Honestly, it's a behavior problem, not just a technology problem.

Podemos tener coches eléctricos, energía solar, todo eso.

We can have electric cars, solar energy, all of that.

Pero si seguimos consumiendo más y más, los números no mejoran.

But if we keep consuming more and more, the numbers don't improve.

Necesitamos cambiar cómo vivimos.

We need to change how we live.

Which is where it gets politically toxic.

Because telling people to consume less, to fly less, to eat less meat, that's not a message that wins elections anywhere.

I watched climate policy collapse in Australia, in Canada, in the U.S., every time it got attached to lifestyle costs.

En España también.

In Spain too.

Cuando el gobierno habló de reducir el uso del coche, muchas personas en ciudades pequeñas y en el campo se enfadaron mucho.

When the government talked about reducing car use, many people in small towns and rural areas got very angry.

Para ellos, el coche no es un lujo.

For them, a car isn't a luxury.

Es necesario para trabajar y vivir.

It's necessary to work and live.

El debate climático a veces ignora esa realidad.

The climate debate sometimes ignores that reality.

That's actually a really important point.

The geography of climate sacrifice is deeply unequal.

The people who contributed least to emissions, rural poor communities, developing nations, small island states, are absorbing the worst consequences.

And being asked to change their behavior on top of that.

Exacto.

Exactly.

Un ciudadano en Bangladés emite muy poco CO2.

A citizen in Bangladesh emits very little CO2.

Pero sufre inundaciones terribles.

But they suffer terrible floods.

Un ciudadano rico en Europa o en Estados Unidos emite mucho más.

A wealthy citizen in Europe or the United States emits much more.

Hay una injusticia muy grande en todo esto.

There is a very serious injustice in all of this.

So where does that leave us with the WMO report?

I keep coming back to the phrase they used: record levels.

Not elevated levels.

Not concerning levels.

Records.

And records, by definition, tell you something has never been worse.

La verdad es que cada año los científicos dicen que fue un año récord y la gente ya no reacciona con sorpresa.

The truth is that every year scientists say it was a record year and people no longer react with surprise.

Eso es peligroso.

That's dangerous.

Cuando todo es un récord, nada parece urgente.

When everything is a record, nothing feels urgent.

Pero los récords de calor en los océanos tienen consecuencias reales para décadas.

But ocean heat records have real consequences for decades to come.

Record fatigue.

It's real.

I've written about it.

When the emergency is permanent, the word emergency loses its meaning.

The challenge for science communicators, and for journalists, is how do you make this feel urgent every single year without burning people out.

A ver, creo que la respuesta es hablar de cosas concretas y locales.

I think the answer is to talk about concrete, local things.

No solo de números globales.

Not just global numbers.

Cuando la gente entiende que el calor en los océanos afectó a la pesca en su región, o que la sequía destruyó las cosechas cerca de su pueblo, reacciona de otra manera.

When people understand that ocean heat affected fishing in their region, or that drought destroyed harvests near their town, they react differently.

Local and specific.

That's good journalism advice, actually.

The abstract never moves people.

The particular does.

I think that's maybe the note to end on, because it applies to listeners too.

The WMO report isn't about the planet in some distant sense.

It's about the water you swim in.

Bueno, y para terminar, quiero decir algo honesto.

And to finish, I want to say something honest.

No soy optimista sobre los próximos años.

I'm not optimistic about the next few years.

Los números son muy malos.

The numbers are very bad.

Pero sí creo que las personas jóvenes entienden este problema mejor que mi generación.

But I do believe young people understand this problem better than my generation did.

Eso me da un poco de esperanza.

That gives me a little hope.

I'll take a little hope.

That's probably the right place to leave it.

The WMO report is a record of failure in some ways, but it's also a precise diagnosis.

And you can't treat what you haven't diagnosed.

Thanks for this one, Octavio.

Genuinely.

De nada, Fletcher.

You're welcome, Fletcher.

Y la próxima vez que pongas hielo en tu vino, recuerda que los océanos ya están demasiado calientes.

And the next time you put ice in your wine, remember that the oceans are already too warm.

No necesitas hacer lo mismo con el vino.

You don't need to do the same to the wine.