World likely to surpass critical warming threshold by 2030, new UN report warns
Breanne Deppisch
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The window for restricting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2030 is rapidly closing, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned in a new report Monday, saying that the world has one last chance to take immediate, aggressive action to change course.
According to the report, greenhouse gas emissions must be halved by the mid-2030s if there is any hope of limiting the increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial levels, which is the target established under the Paris climate accord.
Over a century of fossil fuel usage has pushed global temperatures 1.1 degrees Celsius above where they were at the start of the industrial era, the report said, and the current trajectory has the planet slated to warm by 3.2 degrees Celsius before this century ends.
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Increased warming will result in even more weather extremes, the report said, including more intense heatwaves, heavier rainfall, and risks to human health and ecosystems, including climate-driven food and water insecurity.
“Climate change is a threat to human wellbeing and planetary health. The choices and actions implemented in this decade will have impacts now and for thousands of years,” the report read.
The IPCC report calls for countries to phase out coal, oil, and gas developments, noting that they are responsible for more than 75% of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.
“If we act now, we can still secure a livable sustainable future for all,” IPCC Chairman Hoesung Lee said.
The synthesis report, authored by more than 90 scientists from around the world, draws on years of earlier findings that study the causes and consequences of climate change.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the IPCC report a Monday as a “a survival guide for humanity” and called on developed nations to commit to reaching net-zero emissions to 2040 — a decade sooner than originally planned. Investment in fossil fuel projects has increased in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“The rate of temperature rise in the last half-century is the highest in 2,000 years,” he told reporters at a press conference to mark the report’s release. “Concentrations of carbon dioxide are at their highest in at least 2 million years.”
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“Humanity is on thin ice — and that ice is melting fast,” he said.
The report is the sixth assessment published by the IPCC since its founding in 1988.