UN: The U.N. climate panel sounded a dire warning Monday, saying the world is dangerously close to runaway warming – and that humans are “unequivocally” to blame.
Already, greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere are high enough to guarantee climate disruption for decades if not centuries, scientists warn in a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
That’s on top of the deadly heat waves, powerful hurricanes and other weather extremes that are happening now and are likely to become more severe.
Describing the report as a “code red for humanity,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres urged an immediate end to coal energy and other high-polluting fossil fuels.
“The alarm bells are deafening,” Guterres said in a statement. “This report must sound a death knell for coal and fossil fuels, before they destroy our planet.”
The IPCC report comes just three months before a major U.N. climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, where nations will be under pressure to pledge ambitious climate action and substantial financing.
Drawing on more than 14,000 scientific studies, the report gives the most comprehensive and detailed picture yet of how climate change is altering the natural world — and what still could be ahead.
Unless immediate, rapid and large-scale action is taken to reduce emissions, the report says, the average global temperature will likely cross the 1.5-degree Celsius warming threshold within the next 20 years.
So far, nations’ pledges to cut emissions have been inadequate for bringing down the level of greenhouse gases accumulated in the atmosphere.
Reacting to the findings, governments and campaigners expressed alarm.
“The IPCC report underscores the overwhelming urgency of this moment,” U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said in a statement. “The world must come together before the ability to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is out of reach.”
