‘UN climate draft allows world to face reality’

Stockholm: A draft UN report on a warming planet unveiled by AFP will allow the world to "face the reality" of climate change, Swedish activist Greta Thunberg said on Wednesday.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change draft projects how species extinction, spreading disease, fatal heat waves, ecosystem collapse, rising seas and other devastating climate impacts are accelerating.

"It confirms what we already knew, that this situation is very dire and that we need to act right now," Thunberg told AFP. But she added that she found it hopeful that "many people are becoming more and more ready to tell it like it is".

The draft, seen exclusively by AFP, says the impacts of climate change will become painfully obvious before a child born today turns 30. Many dangerous thresholds are closer than once thought, and severe consequences stemming from decades of unbridled carbon pollution are unavoidable in the short term.

"We can of course not face this crisis unless... we are adult enough to tell the truth, and to face the reality," Thunberg said. The 18-year-old Swede, who spearheaded the "Fridays for Future" movement and youth climate strikes that swept the world, said the "eye-opening" report was preferable to false reassurances.

"The worst thing is that when people don’t want to talk about the climate crisis... they try to smooth things over. Try to make it sound more attractive," she said. It was important to ensure the message is not "that things will be fine, ‘don’t worry’... when that in fact is not true."