World needs to wake up to warming

London – Society would have to enact “unprecedented” changes to how it consumes energy, travels and builds to meet a lower global warming target or it risks increases in heat waves, flood-causing storms and the chances of drought in some regions as well as the loss of species, a UN report said yesterday.

Keeping the Earth’s temperature rise to only 1.50C, rather than the 20C target agreed to at the Paris Agreement talks in 2015, would have “clear benefits to people and natural ecosystems,” the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said.

The report said at the current rate of warming, the world’s temperatures would likely reach 1.50C between 2030 and 2052 after an increase of 10C above pre-industrial levels since the mid-1800s.

Keeping the 1.50C target would keep the global sea level rise 0.1m lower by 2100 than a 20C target, the report states. That could reduce flooding and give the people who inhabit the world’s coasts, islands and river deltas time to adapt to climate change.

The lower target would also reduce species loss and extinction and the impact on terrestrial, freshwater and coastal ecosystems, the report said.

“There were doubts if we would be able to differentiate impacts set at 1.50C. Even the scientists were surprised to see how much science was already there and how great are the benefits of limiting global warming,” Thelma Krug of the IPCC said. – Reuters