UN ‘survival guide’ report a stark warning on climate

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.

“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.