The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has published its latest report on climate change, and the conclusions are alarming: Planet Earth is about to cross a critical temperature threshold. However, not exceeding this threshold is essential to combating climate change by 2030.
At the same time, scientists around the world are constantly ringing alarm bells to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, a necessary condition if we are to avoid catastrophic droughts and heat waves as well as an unprecedented sea level rise.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned at a meeting on Monday that, in the next 10 years, Earth could exceed the critical temperature threshold of 1.5°C on a global scale, the threshold set by the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, due to insufficient climate action.
Exceeding this threshold will lead to the resurgence and exacerbation of droughts and floods. Moreover, such an overrun would cause water security problems, damage to the global economy, as well as many deaths, IPCC scientists have warned, with the fallout from global warming “increasingly difficult to manage.” According to the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change W Hosung Lee.
In order to delay crossing the 1.5°C threshold, Hosung Lee said countries should halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and implement a “climate-resilient development plan”, especially with clean energy, clean water and clean air.
Members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change also urged countries to avoid producing new coal, saying it should disappear in rich countries by 2030 and in poor ones by 2040.
Inger AndersenThe director of the United Nations Environment Programme, she urged countries to “lower the temperature” by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, a move she described as the “ultimate guide”.
“Humankind is on a thin layer of ice, and that ice is melting fast,” the United Nations Secretary-General warned on Monday. Antonio GuterresAdding that “our world needs climate action on all fronts: everything, everywhere, at the same time.”
Hoseung Lee also noted that the countries most vulnerable to climate change are often those that contribute the least to its effects. The head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said people in these countries were up to 15 times more likely to die from droughts, floods and storms over the past decade. In a study published last July in the journal Climate changeand researchers from Dartmouth College It found that greenhouse gas emissions between 1990 and 2014 in the United States and China, the two largest polluters, caused significant global damage to adjust for nearly $3.6 trillion.
In October, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that global greenhouse gas emissions would increase by about 3°C by the end of the century, 10.6% increase Compared to 2010 levels, and significantly higher than the 43% reduction by 2030 that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change deemed necessary to achieve the Paris climate agreement target. Scientists blame rising global temperatures and greenhouse gas emissions for environmental disruption, rising sea levels, more intense and frequent heat waves, more violent heat waves, and more violent storms and droughts.
In the United States, initiatives to curb climate change have met persistent resistance from Republicans in Congress, who believe that legislation that stifles production of oil, coal and natural gas will harm American workers in the energy industry. Last summer, Republican lawmakers criticized the Inflation Reduction Act, which provides for this 360 billion dollars To take measures to combat climate change, in particular to produce green energy. At the time, the Colorado representative Lauren Boebert He denounced the fact that this law “sacrificed American families on the altar of climate change.” Last June, the Supreme Court lowered the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) regulatory power over greenhouse gases, ruling in favor of a group of Republican-led states and coal producers who demanded curbs to EPA regulations on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. . In the face of local opposition, the Biden government Last week approved an oil project from $8 billion In Alaska, despite calls from environmentalists, including the former vice president Al Gorewho called this project “irresponsible”.
Translated article from the American magazine Forbes – Author: Brian Bouchard
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