This Monday, March 20, a new report was published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change, formed by the world's leading climate scientists.
Nothing new that you don't already know, but it is by far the most straightforward of the IPCC's current series of global warming studies, which began in 2015.
“This report is a clarion call to massively fast-track climate efforts by every country and every sector and on every timeframe,” said UN Secretary General António Guterres. “In short, our world needs climate action on all fronts.”
To emphasize the grave nature of the crisis faced by humankind, the planet’s preeminent scientists and representatives from 195 countries agreed to a historic statement as part of their grim data: “The choices and actions implemented in this decade will have impacts now and for thousands of years.”
Five years of their own research was summaried with a stark warning: By the middle of the next decade, it may be too late to avoid a cycle of climate-induced disasters that dwarf what’s already happening across the globe. “Evidence of observed changes in extremes such as heatwaves, heavy precipitation, droughts and tropical cyclones, and, in particular, their attribution to human influence, has further strengthened,” the report states.
The chance of evading the most severe impacts of burning fossil fuels is almost out of reach, scientists warn, unless radical changes are made—and immediately.
Also from yesterday, an article from Euronews summarises the report as follows:
1) We have no time left to waste
2) Countries that have emitted the least are feeling the impacts of climate change the most
3) The world needs climate action on all fronts
4) There is a clear way forward for climate resilience
5) The money is there but it needs to be spent on the right solutions
Click at the image below, of the file itself, for the 18 slides presentation made during the press conference.
The section called "Summary for Policymakers figures" is particularly interesting.
