Global warming: It’s life or death
PREVENTING an extra single degree of heat could make a life or death difference in the next few decades for multitudes of people and ecosystems on this fast-warming planet, an international panel of scientists reported.
But they provide little hope the world will rise to the challenge.
The Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its gloomy report at a meeting in Incheon, South Korea.
In the 728-page document, the UN organisation detailed how Earth’s weather, health and ecosystems would be in better shape if the world’s leaders could somehow limit future human-caused warming to just 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit (a half degree Celsius) from now, instead of the globally agreedupon goal of 1.8F (1C).
To limit warming to the lower temperature goal, the world needs “rapid and farreaching” changes in energy systems, land use, city and industrial design, transportation and building use, the report said.
Annual carbon dioxide pollution levels that are still rising now would have to drop by about half by 2030 and then be near zero by 2050.
Emissions of other greenhouse gases, such as methane, also will have to drop.
Switching away rapidly from fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas to do this could be more expensive than the less ambitious goal, but it would clean the air of other pollutants.
And that would have the side benefit of avoiding more than 100 million premature deaths through this century, the report said.
“Climate-related risks to health, livelihoods, food security, water supply, human security and economic growth are projected to increase with global warming” the report said, adding the target could be enough to save most of the world’s coral reefs from dying.