Final warning on climate crisis

Scientists: ‘final warning’ on climate crisis.

• Growing greenhouse gas emissions = world on brink of irrevocable damage, only quick and drastic action needed.
• Climate crisis knowledge: eight years of work, hundreds of scientists, thousands of pages = single message, act now, or it will be too late.
• UN Secretary-General António Guterres: “This report is a clarion call to massively accelerate climate efforts by every country, every sector, every time. Our world needs climate action on all fronts: everything, everywhere, at once.”
• The world is already devastated:. extreme weather conditions caused by climate change have resulted in increased deaths from intensifying heat waves in all regions, millions of lives and homes destroyed by droughts and floods, millions of people going hungry, and increasingly irreversible losses in vital ecosystems
• Monday’s latest chapter, called the synthesis report, will almost certainly be the last such assessment while the world still has a chance to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, the threshold beyond which our climate damage will quickly become irreversible
• Kaisa Kosonen, climate expert at Greenpeace International: “This report is definitely a final warning about 1.5C. If governments continue to follow current policies, the remaining carbon budget will be exhausted before 2030.”
• 3 billion people already live in areas “highly vulnerable” to climate change, and half the world’s population suffers from severe water shortages for at least part of the year. Climate extremes are “increasingly driving displacement” of people in Africa, Asia, North, Central and South America, and the South Pacific.
• These effects are likely to increase rapidly.
• Hope to stay within 1.5°C. Hoesung Lee said, “This synthesis report underscores the urgency of taking more ambitious action and shows that if we act now, we can still ensure a sustainable and livable future for all.”
• Guterres: governments must implement drastic actions to reduce emissions ,invest in renewable energy and low-carbon technologies and achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions “as close to 2040 as possible,” without waiting for the 2050 deadline that most have signed up to.