U.N. report: World must act fast to halt warming
Nations need to move away much faster from fossil fuels to retain any hope of preventing a perilous future on an overheated planet, according to a major new report on climate change released Monday, although they have made some progress because of the falling costs of clean energy.
The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of experts convened by the United Nations, warns that unless countries drastically accelerate efforts over the next few years to slash their emissions from coal, oil and natural gas, the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, will likely be out of reach by the end of this decade.
That’s the threshold beyond which scientists say the dangers of global warming — including worsening floods, droughts, wildfires and ecosystem collapse — grow considerably. Humans have already heated the planet by an average of 1.1 degrees Celsius since the 19th century, largely by burning fossil fuels.
But the task is daunting: Holding warming to just 1.5 degrees Celsius would require nations to collectively reduce their planet-warming emissions roughly 43% by 2030 and to stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere altogether by the early 2050s, the report found. By contrast, current policies by governments are only expected to reduce global emissions by a few percentage points this decade. Last year, fossil fuel emissions worldwide rebounded to near-record highs after the pandemic.
The report, which was approved by 195 governments and lays out strategies that countries could pursue to halt global warming, comes as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused oil and gas prices to skyrocket, diverting political attention from climate change. In the United States and Europe, leaders are focused on shoring up domestic fossil fuel supplies to avoid painful price spikes and energy shortages, even if that means increasing emissions in the short term.
Yet climate scientists say there is little margin for delay if the world wants to hold global warming to relatively tolerable levels.
“Every year that you let pass without going for these urgent emissions reductions makes it more and more difficult,” said Jim Skea, an energy researcher at Imperial College London who helped lead the report, which was compiled by 278 experts from 65 countries. “Unless we really do it immediately, it will not be possible to limit warming to 1.5 degrees.”
But even if that goal becomes unattainable, scientists said, it will still be worthwhile for countries to slash emissions as quickly as possible to prevent as much warming as they can. Every additional rise in global temperatures increases the perils that people face around the world, such as water scarcity, malnutrition and life-threatening heat waves, the U.N. panel has found.
“Every fraction of a degree matters,” Skea said. “Even if we go beyond 1.5, that doesn’t mean we throw up our hands and despair.”
Scientists say that global warming will largely come to a halt once humans stop adding heattrapping gases to the atmosphere.