Net zero goal critical to Earth’s stability: study

PARIS: Bringing planet-heating emissions to net zero by 2100 is critical to avoid triggering “tipping points” that could destabilise the systems that keep Earth in balance, a new study said on Thursday.

If left unchecked, global warming could set in motion dangerous and irreversible changes to planetary systems such as the disappearance of ice sheets or a collapse of ocean currents.

Researchers said action today would have an influence on the chances of triggering these catastrophic events, even if they are very slow moving and likely to unfold over tens to thousands of years.

“What we do now matters for the next decades, and centuries and even millennia to come,” said Nico Wunderling, one of the study´s authors from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. The level of global action on climate change is currently insufficient to avoid the risk of at least one of Earth´s critical systems from tipping into collapse.

Global warming is on track to exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times -- the cap scientists say must be respected to avert the most disastrous impacts of climate change.

“Permanently exceeding this limit would substantially increase the probability of triggering climate tipping elements,” said the study published in the journal Nature Communications.

Under the 2015 Paris climate agreement, nearly 200 countries committed to keeping warming “well below” 2C and to strive for the safer goal of 1.5C by the end of the century. The world is not on track to achieve this.