The United Nations has warned that global greenhouse gas emissions must be slashed quickly and drastically to avoid reaching an irreversible tipping point.
The AR6 Synthesis Report was released on Monday after a weeklong session held by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which boasts some of the world’s top scientists and experts.
“Emissions should be decreasing by now and will need to be cut by almost half by 2030, if warming is to be limited to 1.5°C,” the experts stated in a press release.
At the meeting, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that the planet is “nearing the point of no return,” while the experts call for “deep, rapid and sustained greenhouse gas emissions reductions in all sectors.”
The panel first flagged the drastic measures needed to be taken to keep warming to only 1.5°C above preindustrial levels — the goal of the Paris Agreement — in 2018 and have continued urging nations to take more serious action.
Experts blame the increasing scale of fossil fuel burning, oil drilling, deforestation and intensive agriculture, among the extensive list of activities that produce greenhouse gases.
“The pace and the scale of what has been done so far, and current plans, are insufficient to tackle climate change,” the experts warn, noting that “the choices made in the next few years will play a critical role in deciding our future and that of generations to come.”
This comes months after the symbolic Doomsday Clock — designed by scientists to measure how close the world is to an apocalypse — was reset to 90 seconds to midnight. This is the closest the clock has ever been set to midnight in the 76 years since its creation.
“We are living in a time of unprecedented danger, and the Doomsday Clock time reflects that reality,” Rachel Bronson, Ph.D., president and CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said in the announcement.
The scientists noted the “continuing threats posed by the climate crisis and the breakdown of global norms and institutions needed to mitigate risks associated with advancing technologies and biological threats such as COVID-19.”
The world is already experiencing some effects of climate change — rising sea levels, increasing erosion and more severe heat waves, floods and droughts.
“Climate justice is crucial because those who have contributed least to climate change are being disproportionately affected,” said Aditi Mukherji, one of the report’s 93 authors.
“Almost half of the world’s population lives in regions that are highly vulnerable to climate change. In the last decade, deaths from floods, droughts and storms were 15 times higher in highly vulnerable regions,“ she added.
President Joe Biden listed global warming as “the single most existential threat to humanity we have ever faced,” but is currently being sued by a coalition of environmental organizations after he approved an $8 billion Alaskan oil drilling project the groups are calling a “carbon bomb.”