UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has published its latest report. The authors of the landmark report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said urgent and unprecedented changes are needed to reach the target, which is affordable and feasible although it lies at the most ambitious end of the Paris agreement pledge to keep temperatures between 1.5C and 2C.
Leading scientists warn that there is only 12 years to be kept to a maximum of 1.5C and avoid catastrophic environmental breakdown.
The Guardian reports that Christiana Figueres, former UN climate chief who led the historic Paris agreement of 2015, said: “There is nothing opaque about this new data. The illustrations of mounting impacts, the fast-approaching and irreversible tipping points are visceral versions of a future that no policy-maker could wish to usher in or be responsible for.”
The scientific evidence is overwhelming but the political will struggle to match it. If climate change becomes the biggest failure of evidence-informed policy making ever, the costs will be incalculable and for generations to come.
Great if we manage to change our individual habits to live more sustainable lives and pay greater attention to renewable sources of energy. That, however, in itself is not enough. Those individual changes and actions require the support from new policies and new laws.
More articles:
Nicholas Stern: We must reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero or face more floods.
Christiana Figueres: Limiting warming to 1.5C is possible – if there is political will
George Monbiot: We won’t save the Earth with a better kind of disposable coffee cup