UN is poised to deliver stark climate warning
THERE are renewed calls for a shift away from fossil fuels as the United Nations prepares to release a major report on what the world needs to do to tackle climate change.
The latest report from a UN science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), sets out solutions needed to curb global warming, including cutting fossil fuel emissions with technology such as renewables.
The report, due out today, will set out measures to cut emissions from the energy sector, agriculture and land, cities, buildings, industry and transport. It is also expected to emphasise the role of consumer behaviour and look at ways to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, including through activities such as planting trees as well as new technology.
It comes as soaring energy prices and supply pressures, worsened by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, have prompted renewed debate over security of supplies, and whether to accelerate climate action or exploit more oil and gas resources.
The new UN report is the third instalment of the sixth assessment report, an overarching analysis of the world’s scientific knowledge on climate change.
The assessments take place every six or seven years, with the individual instalments released over a period of months.
Each climate report from the IPCC is published after its summary is approved line by line in a process involving representatives of 195 governments and scientists – with the latest report’s approval meeting running well past its scheduled finish time last Friday.
The first part of the assessment, which looked at the physical basis of climate change, which was released in August 2021, found humans are unequivocally driving global warming, with the effects already being felt. It was labelled a “code red for humanity” by UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres.
When the second report was released in February, detailing the impacts of rising temperatures and options – and limits – to adapting to them, Mr Guterres described it as “an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership”. It found climate change has led to increasing heat and heatwaves, rising sea levels, floods, wildfires, and drought, causing death, food and water scarcity, and migration.
Ahead of the latest report’s publication, Greenpeace UK senior climate adviser Charlie Kronick said: “Our fossil fuel dependence is funding Putin’s war and soaring gas prices are hurting millions of households.
“We already have good reasons to move away from oil and gas and invest in insulation and heat pumps to cut energy wastage from our homes – but, on Monday, the world’s leading climate scientists will remind us of the other major reason we must do so: to stop the climate disaster threatening everything we hold dear.”
Sam Hall, director of the Conservative Environment Network, which includes dozens of Tory MPs, said: “The case for reducing fossil fuel consumption across the economy has only got stronger.”