A recent report backed by the United Nations warns that the planet is rapidly approaching catastrophic levels of warming, and that international climate goals will become unattainable unless immediate and radical action is taken
António Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, has cautioned that the “climate time-bomb is ticking.” He made this statement while marking the launch of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s synthesis report on Monday. Guterres added that “humanity is on thin ice – and that ice is melting fast.”
The report is based on the findings of hundreds of scientists to provide a comprehensive assessment of how the climate crisis is unfolding.
The science is not new – the report pulls together what the IPCC has already set out in a cluster of other reports over the last few years – but it paints a very stark picture of where the world is heading.
“This report is the most dire and troubling assessment yet of the spiraling climate impacts we all face if systemic changes are not made now,” Sara Shaw, program coordinator at Friends of the Earth International, said in a statement.
The impacts of planet-warming pollution are already more severe than expected and we are hurtling towards increasingly dangerous and irreversible consequences, the report says.
While the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels is still possible, the report noted, the pathway to achieving it is rapidly closing as global production of planet-heating pollution continues to increase – emissions grew by nearly 1% last year.
Concentrations of carbon pollution in the atmosphere are at their highest level for more than two million years and the rate of temperature rise over the last half a century is the highest in 2,000 years.
The impacts of the climate crisis continue to fall hardest on poorer, vulnerable countries that have done least to cause it.
“Our planet is already reeling from severe climate impacts, from scorching heat waves and destructive storms to severe droughts and water shortages,” said Ani Dasgupta, president and CEO of World Resources Institute, in a statement.
The biggest threat to climate change action is the world’s continued addiction to burning fossil fuels, which still make up more than 80% of the world’s energy and 75% of human-caused planet-heating pollution.
Despite the International Energy Agency saying in 2021 that there can now be no new fossil fuel developments if the world is to meet climate commitments, governments are continuing to approve oil, gas and coal projects.
The Biden administration has just greenlit the hugely controversial Willow oil drilling project in Alaska. Once operational, it is projected to produce enough oil to release 9.2 million metric tons of planet-warming carbon pollution a year – equivalent to adding 2 million gas-powered cars to the roads.
Arati Prabhakar, the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said in a statement that the new UN report shows “the Earth’s future is not predetermined.”
“It underscores the urgent need for leaders in every sector and every country to step up and take bold climate action,” Prabhakar said.
China is planning a huge expansion of coal – the dirtiest of fossil fuels. In 2022, it granted permits for coal production across 82 sites, equal to starting two large coal power plants each week, according to a report last month.
The report, which was signed off over the weekend by representatives from the UN’s nearly 200 countries, will feed into the next UN climate conference,COP28,in Dubai, at the end of the year. The conference will include the first “global stock take” from the Paris Climate Agreement, an assessment of progress toward addressing the climate crisis and averting climate catastrophe.
