PARIS: Devastating climate impacts are hitting faster than expected as the world teeters on reaching the 1.5 degree Celsius warming limit in a little over a decade, the UN said on Monday.
Temperatures seen in recent years have stoked destructive storms and flooding, crop-wilting heatwaves and deadly droughts. But generations to come will look back on the hottest years of the 2020s as relatively cool, even if planet-warming fossil fuel emissions drop quickly, the UN´s climate advisory panel said in a key report.
The 36-page “summary for policymakers” -- a synthesis of six major reports since 2018 from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) -- is a brutal reminder that while humanity has the tools to prevent climate catastrophe, it is still not putting them to use.
The world is currently set to reach 1.5C above pre-industrial levels -- considered a safer limit to warming -- in the early 2030s, which will ratchet up the severity of impacts in the near future. But it´s not too late to turn things around, the head of the IPCC told AFP, describing the report as a “message of hope”.
“We have know-how, technology, tools, financial resources -- everything needed to overcome the climate problems we have known about for so long,” Hoesung Lee said in a video interview. “What´s lacking at this point is a strong political will to resolve this issues once and for all.”
In response to the report, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said wealthy countries aiming for carbon neutrality in 2050 or beyond should speed up their goal to as close as possible to 2040 in order to “defuse the climate time bomb.” “Humanity is on thin ice -- and that ice is melting fast,” the United Nations chief said in a video message as the IPCC experts group issued its latest report, which he likened to “a survival guide for humanity.”
The boost for Harris came amid new turmoil for 78-year-old Trump, who cast into doubt whether he will debate the vice...
“It was, unfortunately, a bullet that hit my ear, and hit it hard. There was no glass, there was no shrapnel,”...
Starting this month, three autonomous on-demand delivery robots will begin their trial within the community
“They identify where our mobile groups are positioned, where the machine guns are that can destroy them," says...
Biden describes the pair as “two of the most notorious leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel”
Wang says Beijing is “ready to work with Russia to... firmly support each other, safeguard each other’s core...