New climate report finds ‘livable future’ depends on emissions reductions this decade

The world needs to halve greenhouse gas emissions within a decade, a landmark new United Nations report urges.To get there, the world needs to rapidly switch to clean energy, reduce energy use and deploy technologies that capture some of our planet’s heating carbon dioxide pollution, the report’s authors note.

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“We are at a crossroads. The decisions we make now can ensure a habitable future. We have what it takes to limit warming,” Hoesung Lee, chair of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said in a release. tools and techniques.”

Hundreds of top climate scientists contributed to the report, which outlines what is needed to avoid a full-blown climate catastrophe. It boils down to one key call to action: reducing greenhouse gas emissions across all sectors “rapidly and deeply”. It builds on previous studies that have found that global warming of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius will wreak havoc on people and wildlife around the world. We humans are approaching breaking this threshold at an alarming rate. A new report today says we could surpass it by 2030.

But if significant changes are made to cut emissions in half this decade, we can rewrite this grim future. The longer-term goal is to achieve net greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century to keep average global temperatures stable.

The report notes that the technology needed to achieve these goals is already at our fingertips. Since 2010, the cost of solar and wind power and batteries that store renewable energy has fallen by 85 percent. A similar price drop for electric vehicles would reduce tailpipe pollution. Ultimately, changes in everyday behavior are also needed to reduce energy use in the first place, the authors say. This means making it easier for cities to get around by walking, cycling or taking public transport. To do their part, investors can divest from fossil fuels and consumers can simply consume less.

“Investing in new fossil fuel infrastructure is morally and economically insane,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a news conference. “Such an investment can quickly become a stranded asset, a landscape a stain on the portfolio and become a stain on the portfolio.”

However, the report does leave room for some to continue using fossil fuels if it is paired with more controversial climate technologies. This includes carbon capture technology, which removes greenhouse gases from emissions before they escape the stack. If the world is to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, switching to other technologies to extract carbon dioxide from the air is now “inevitable”, the report said.

Those tactics, however, quickly drew criticism from some environmentalists, who feared the technologies would prolong the dominance of fossil fuels. “Carbon capture and storage cannot make coal clean, natural gas green, or oil Carbon free. Relying on speculative technologies that prolong the use of fossil fuels and claim reductions or removals after future temperature rises of more than 1.5°C will cost lives and cause further irreversible damage.”

Today’s report is the third in a series of assessments of how climate change is already altering life on Earth. The first report, released last August, analyzed how human activity is making extreme weather events and other climate-related threats more dangerous. A second report, released in February, found the need to change our behavior and infrastructure to adapt to climate change.