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ipcc report
Demanding Swift Action, UN Chief Calls IPCC Report a 'Survival Guide for Humanity'
"We must move into warp-speed climate action now. We don't have a moment to lose," said United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres.
Mar 20, 2023
The head of the United Nations outlined a plan Monday to "super-charge" climate action after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its most stark warning yet about the trajectory of planetary heating and its cascading impacts on ecosystems and the life they sustain.
"This report is a clarion call to massively fast-track climate efforts by every country and every sector and on every timeframe," said U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, who argued the IPCC's findings show that "humanity is on thin ice—and that ice is melting fast."
"Today's IPCC report is a how-to guide to defuse the climate time bomb," Guterres added. "It is a survival guide for humanity. As it shows, the 1.5-degree limit is achievable. But it will take a quantum leap in climate action."
To achieve such a leap, the U.N. chief said it is imperative for governments to urgently work toward a number of benchmarks, including:
- No new coal and the phasing out of coal by 2030 in OECD countries and 2040 in all other countries;
- Ending all international public and private funding of coal;
- Ensuring net zero electricity generation by 2035 for all developed countries and 2040 for the rest of the world;
- Ceasing all licensing or funding of new oil and gas—consistent with the findings of the International Energy Agency;
- Stopping any expansion of existing oil and gas reserves;
- Shifting subsidies from fossil fuels to a just energy transition; and
- Establishing a global phase-down of existing oil and gas production compatible with the 2050 global net zero target.
"By the end of COP28, I count on all G20 leaders to have committed to ambitious new economy-wide nationally determined contributions encompassing all greenhouse gases and indicating their absolute emissions cuts targets for 2035 and 2040," said Guterres, who is set to host a September summit aimed at building global support for bold climate action.
"Partial pledges won't cut it," Guterres said Monday. "We have never been better equipped to solve the climate challenge—but we must move into warp-speed climate action now. We don't have a moment to lose."
"This report is a clarion call to massively fast-track climate efforts by every country and every sector and on every timeframe."
Compiled by hundreds of top scientists from around the world, the IPCC's new report—like previous iterations—emphasizes that greenhouse gas emissions stemming from human activity "have unequivocally caused global warming" and that "continued greenhouse gas emissions will lead to increasing global warming."
"There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all," the report states. "The choices and actions implemented in this decade will have impacts now and for thousands of years."
Warming beyond the Paris accord's most ambitious target of 1.5°C by century's end, the report warned, would expose ecosystems and societies to "greater and more widespread" consequences, including "increased wildfires, mass mortality of trees, drying of peatlands, and permafrost thawing, weakening natural land carbon sinks and increasing releases of GHGs."
The report cautioned that without dramatic emission cuts, the world could hit the 1.5°C warming threshold by "the first half of the 2030s." Earth has already warmed 1.1°C since the mid-19th century.
IPCC scientists estimated that global greenhouse gas emissions must be cut by 60% by 2035—compared to 2019 levels—to keep alive hopes of averting climate catastrophe.
Romain Ioualalen, global policy campaign manager at Oil Change International, said Monday that the new assessment "once more raises the alarms to code red."
"The United Nations secretary-general's response to the IPCC report makes it abundantly clear that the time when countries can pretend to be climate leaders while expanding oil and gas production is over," said Ioualalen. "This is why the Biden administration's reckless decision to approve the Willow oil project in Alaska deserves international condemnation."
"We commend Secretary-General Guterres for laying out clear expectations for all countries to ban new oil and gas projects immediately while charting a just and equitable transition away from fossil fuels and towards clean energy for all," Ioualalen continued. "This question must be at the heart of the secretary general's September summit and COP28."
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'We Have a Choice Here to Act': IPCC Climate Report to Sound Most Dire Warning Yet
"The central message from climate scientists is unmistakable: governments must rally to drastically cut emissions and cease the extraction and burning of fossil fuels this decade."
Mar 20, 2023
A United Nations panel composed of the world's top scientists is set to release its latest climate assessment on Monday as governments fail to heed repeated, increasingly urgent warnings that the window for action to prevent catastrophic global heating is nearly shut.
The landmark report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will come after a year in which planet-warming CO2 emissions shattered records once again as the impacts of such pollution—from "apocalyptic" flooding in Pakistan to deadly drought in East Africa—continued to mount.
After repeated delays, government delegations signed off on the IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report on Sunday, clearing the way for the formal release of a sprawling synthesis of years of climate research.
The Associated Pressreported that the final decision came after "officials from big nations such as China, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, the United States, and the European Union haggled through the weekend over the wording of key phrases in the text."
Lesley Hughes, a former IPCC author and a director of the Australia-based Climate Council, said ahead of the report's release that "while this is a summary report of work we'd already seen in development, there is no doubt the findings of this report will be dire."
"Since the previous IPCC report was released, we've had even more unnatural disasters," Hughes added. "We must focus on the fact that predictions are now becoming observations. We've also had a period since the previous IPCC report came out where global emissions are rising once again, so the gap between where we are and where we need to go is increasing rather than decreasing."
"If we haven't seriously turned things around by the time the next such assessment report is due, then we'll be in very deep trouble."
The IPCC's 2021 report was deemed a "code red for humanity," a glaring signal that accelerated global action to phase out fossil fuel extraction and use was needed to avert disaster.
But in the years since, governments—specifically the rich nations most responsible for the climate crisis—have refused to act with the speed and ambition that scientists say is necessary.
At the end of 2022, the U.N. climate conference—an event teeming with fossil fuel lobbyists—ended with no concrete action to rein in oil and gas production.
As a result, hugely profitable global fossil fuel giants are planning to expand their operations in the coming years, potentially locking in additional emissions and further imperiling efforts to meet critical warming targets.
Governments, including those that claim to view the climate crisis as an existential threat, are actively aiding the continued extraction of fossil fuels. Just last week, the Biden administration approved the largest proposed oil drilling project on U.S. public land despite widespread opposition.
"This is the kind of thing that we simply can't afford to do anymore," Kristina Dahl of the Union of Concerned Scientists wrote late last week. "The fossil fuel industry has, for decades, opposed and obstructed any meaningful action on climate change. And despite ardent claims otherwise, the industry has refused to commit to align its business model with what the IPCC says is required to minimize climate harms. The industry remains a barrier to the future the world's children deserve."
Simon Bradshaw, the Climate Council's director of research, said Monday that the IPCC's new report will represent "a final warning."
"The central message from climate scientists is unmistakable: governments must rally to drastically cut emissions and cease the extraction and burning of fossil fuels this decade," said Bradshaw. "That message has been delivered repeatedly, and consistently, for many decades."
"We are seeing progress when it comes to renewable energy uptake, and cleaner transport, but things just aren't moving fast enough. If we haven't seriously turned things around by the time the next such assessment report is due, then we'll be in very deep trouble," Bradshaw added. "We have a choice here to act swiftly this decade. If we start giving it our all right now, we can avert the worst of it. So many solutions are readily available, like solar and wind power, storage, electric appliances, and clean transport options. We need to get our skates on."
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With 2degC Target Falling Swiftly Out of Sight, Inaction on Climate a 'Crime Against Humanity'
With commitments failing to keep pace with soaring temperatures, dire warnings as climate negotiators meet in Bonn in preparation for Paris summit
Jun 07, 2015
International climate talks continue, but it is the action (or lack thereof) that humanity needs to worry about.
"By ignoring the need to prevent a breach of the 2C tipping point, the point beyond which scientists cannot predict the sheer scale of [climate] impacts... Paris will go down in infamy as the scene of a modern-day crime against humanity."
--Asad Rehman, Friends of the Earth
As representatives from nearly all the world's nations meet in Bonn, Germany, this week to build a framework for a final deal that can be signed at the UN climate summit in Paris later this year, voices from the least developed countries and members of civil society are warning that the major powers are still offering far too little in the way of meaningful action.
According to the sharpest critics of the largest polluting nations—including the U.S., Canada, China, and the European Union—a continued failure to make bold and enforceable reductions of greenhouse gas emissions should be considered nothing less than a "crime against humanity."
As observers describe progress at the talks in Bonn as moving at a snail's pace, the attempt to forge a meaningful agreement for Paris appears to be slipping quickly through the fingers of world leaders.
As the Guardianreports on Sunday:
With little negotiating time left ahead of the UN climate summit in Paris later this year, diplomats from nearly 200 countries meeting in Bonn have reportedly made little progress, raising the possibility of a last-minute diplomatic fiasco, as happened in Copenhagen in 2009.
The mistrust between countries that built up in Copenhagen now threatens the Paris talks, said Tosi Mpanu-Mpanu of the Democratic Republic of Congo, who is chairman of the 48-strong least-developed countries group. "The [UN] process is flawed by a complete lack of trust and confidence between rich and poor countries," he said. "We need time. Because of this lack of trust we have no other way of proceeding. We have to go ahead with baby steps. We are not making much progress, but we are going in the right direction. There are so many issues. It's a process of attrition.
"Every year there is a watering down of the commitments. It feels every year that we are losing out. Twenty countries contribute 80% of emissions, the rest 20%. Yet we in Africa are being asked to cut emissions. OK, we say, but help us. Give us finance, technology."
Concern is growing that rich countries, which have together pledged to mobilize $100bn a year to help countries adapt to climate change, are so far unwilling to discuss how the money will be raised, said Martin Khor, director of the South Center, a leading intergovernmental thinktank of developing countries. "The developing countries are disappointed that there seems to be little hope that the $100bn will materialize. They have no idea what will be available, so they cannot plan ahead. If countries really wanted a [strong] deal, they would be talking about finance by now," said Khor.
Last week, just ahead of the talks, Reutersspoke with several experts who said the mood behind closed doors was somber as many admit privately that the agreed target of the UN-member states of limiting global temperature increases this century to no more than 2degC (2 degrees Celsius or 2C) is simply no longer attainable given the level of commitments currently on the table.
"It's just not feasible," Oliver Geden, of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, told Reuters in discussion of the target. "Two degrees is a focal point for the climate debate but it doesn't seem to be a focal point for political action."
And David Victor, a professor of international relations at the University of California, San Diego, told the news agency that he predicts the 2C goal will slip away despite the public assurances by negotiators and other government officials that it is still alive. For the idea of holding temperatures below 2C, said Victor, "Paris will be a funeral without a corpse."
In an exchange with Common Dreams, however, Asad Rehman, head of the international climate campaign for Friends of the Earth, said the talks in Paris might well be considered a funeral but disputed the idea that there are no dead bodies involved.
"Breaching the 2C target is not a 'funeral without a corpse,'" Rehman explained, because "the corpses already have names and faces and are from every corner of the world - they are dying in their thousands from heat in India, as we speak. The more the reality of climate change impacts people's lives in every corner of the world, the more scientists warn us of the dangers of failing to act, the greater the reluctance of political leaders to act. Rich country leaders are playing Russian roulette with all of our futures for the sake of short-term economic interests."
He added, "By ignoring the need to prevent a breach of the 2C tipping point, the point beyond which scientists are unable to predict the sheer scale of impacts on our food production, our homes and our lives, politicians will effectively signing the death sentence for millions. Paris will go down in infamy as the scene of a modern-day crime against humanity."
The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says that on current emissions trends, the planet is now on target for a temperature increase of 4.8C or more by 2100 -- a level of warming that would drive dramatic increases in hunger, extreme weather, species loss, and waves of climate-fueled migrations of tens of millions of people.
In order to even come close to meeting the 2C target, the IPCC has said that global annual carbon emissions must fall by 40 to 70 percent by 2050 compared to 2010 levels - and to zero or below by 2100. Currently, governments are not even close to such commitments.
According to Alix Mazounie, a French activist with the Climate Action Network (CAN), who spoke with Agence France-Presse over the weekend, "If countries really want to show that they are moving out of fossil fuels, as the IPCC recommends, they have to set a target for 2050 and a deadline for reaching zero emissions."
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