Fresh warning sounded on climate
Time running out for action to prevent catastrophic global warming, IPCC says in new report
PARIS — Humanity has less than three years to halt the rise of planetwarming carbon emissions and less than a decade to slash them by nearly half, UN climate experts said on April 4, warning the world faces a last gasp race to ensure a “livable future”.
That daunting task is still — only just — possible, but current policies are leading the planet toward catastrophic temperature rises, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change made clear.
The world’s nations, they said, are taking our future right to the wire.
The 2,800-page report — by far the most comprehensive assessment ever produced of how to halt global heating — documents “a litany of broken climate promises”, said UN chief Antonio Guterres in a blistering judgment of governments and industry.
“Some government and business leaders are saying one thing — but doing another. Simply put, they are lying. And the results will be catastrophic,” Guterres said.
In recent months, the IPCC published
the first two installments in a trilogy of mammoth scientific assessments covering how greenhouse gas emissions are heating the planet.
This third report outlines what we can do about it.
“We are at a crossroads,” IPCC chief Hoesung Lee said. “The decisions we make now can secure a livable future. We have the tools and know-how required to limit warming.”
The solutions touch on virtually all aspects of modern life, require significant investment and need “immediate action”, the IPCC said.
The very first item on the global to-do list is to stop greenhouse gas emissions from rising any further.
That must be done before 2025 to have a hope of keeping within even the Paris Agreement’s less ambitious warming target of 2 C above preindustrial levels.
Scientists warn that any rise above 1.5 C risks the collapse of ecosystems and the triggering of irreversible shifts in the climate system.
To achieve that target, the report said carbon emissions need to drop 43 percent by 2030 and 84 percent by midcentury.
“It’s now or never, if we want to limit global warming to 1.5 C,” said Jim Skea, a professor at Imperial College London and co-chair of the working group behind the report.
To do that, the world must radically reduce the fossil fuels behind the lion’s share of emissions.
Nations should stop burning coal completely and cut oil and gas use by 60 and 70 percent respectively to keep within the Paris goals, the IPCC said.
But cutting emissions is no longer enough, it said. Technologies to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere will need to be ramped up enormously.