Nations Approve Major New UN Climate Change Report

The latest IPCC report calling for immediate, urgent climate action report comes a week after the Biden Administration in the United States approved the huge Willow oil-drilling project in Alaska, which could produce up to 180,000 barrels of oil a day. The world needs to cut 60% of its greenhouse gas emissions by 2035, compared with 2019, IPCC says.

Humanity is on thin ice — and that ice is melting fast,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said. “Our world needs climate action on all fronts — everything, everywhere, all at once.

Here are excerpts from early coverage of today's IPCC report from the Associated Press, NY Times, Washington Post, and the IPCC press release.  

AP / ABC: UN Issues Major New Report on Climate Change

• Governments gave their blessing on Sunday to a major new U.N. report on climate change, after approval was held up by a battle between rich and developing countries over emissions targets and financial aid to vulnerable nations.
• The report by hundreds of the world’s top scientists was supposed to be approved by government delegations Friday at the end of a weeklong meeting in the Swiss town of Interlaken.
• The report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change caps a series that digests vast amounts of research on global warming compiled since the Paris climate accord was adopted in 2015.
• A summary of the report was approved early Sunday, but agreement on the main text dragged on for several more hours. The U.N. plans to publish the report at a news conference early Monday afternoon.

IPCC Press Release: Urgent climate action can secure a liveable future for all

• There are multiple, feasible and effective options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to human-caused climate change, and they are available now, said scientists in the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released today.
• The solution lies in climate resilient development. This involves integrating measures to adapt to climate change with actions to reduce or avoid greenhouse gas emissions in ways that provide wider benefits. For example: access to clean energy and technologies improves health, especially for women and children; low-carbon electrification, walking, cycling and public transport enhance air quality, improve health, employment opportunities and deliver equity.
• Accelerated climate action will only come about if there is a many-fold increase in finance. Insufficient and misaligned finance is holding back progress.
• Governments, through public funding and clear signals to investors, are key in reducing these barriers. Investors, central banks and financial regulators can also play their part.AP / Boston Globe: World on ‘thin ice’ as UN climate report gives stark warning (AP here)
• “Humanity is on thin ice — and that ice is melting fast,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said. “Our world needs climate action on all fronts — everything, everywhere, all at once.”
• The U.N. science panel calculated and reported that to stay under the warming limit set in Paris the world needs to cut 60% of its greenhouse gas emissions by 2035, compared with 2019, adding a new target not previously mentioned in the six reports issued since 2018.
• “We are not on the right track but it’s not too late,’’ said report co-author and water scientist Aditi Mukherji. “Our intention is really a message of hope."
• This is likely the last warning the Nobel Peace Prize-winning collection of scientists will be able to make about the 1.5 mark because their next set of reports will likely come after Earth has either breached the mark or locked into exceeding it soon, several scientists, including report authors, told The Associated Press.
• After 1.5 degrees “the risks are starting to pile on,” said report co-author Francis X. Johnson, a climate, land and policy scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute. The report mentions “tipping points” around that temperature of species extinction, including coral reefs, irreversible melting of ice sheets and sea level rise on the order of several meters (several yards).
• If the world continues to use all the fossil fuel-powered infrastructure either existing now or proposed Earth will warm at least 2 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times, blowing past the 1.5 mark, the report said.
• Because the report is based on data from a few years ago, the calculations about fossil fuel projects already in the pipeline do not include the increase in coal and natural gas use after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, said report co-author Dipak Dasgupta, a climate economist at The Energy and Resources Institute in India.
• The report comes a week after the Biden Administration in the United States approved the huge Willow oil-drilling project in Alaska, which could produce up to 180,000 barrels of oil a day.

New York Times: Earth to Hit Critical Warming Threshold by Early 2030s, Climate Panel Says

• Earth is likely to cross a critical threshold for global warming within the next decade, and nations will need to make an immediate and drastic shift away from fossil fuels to prevent the planet from overheating dangerously beyond that level, according to a major new report released on Monday.
• The report comes as the world’s two biggest polluters, China and the United States, continue to approve new fossil fuel projects. Last week, the Biden administration approved an enormous oil drilling project known as Willow that will take place on pristine federal land in Alaska.
• Every fraction of a degree of additional warming is expected to increase the severity of dangers that people around the world face, such as water scarcity, malnutrition and deadly heat waves.
• Under the current policies of national governments, Earth is on pace to heat up by 2.1 to 2.9 degrees Celsius this century, analysts have estimated.
• The new report is a synthesis of six previous landmark reports on climate change issued by the U.N. panel since 2018, each one compiled by hundreds of experts across the globe, approved by 195 countries and based on thousands of scientific studies. Taken together, the reports represent the most comprehensive look to date at the causes of global warming, the impacts that rising temperatures are having on people and ecosystems across the world and the strategies that countries can pursue to halt global warming.Even relatively modest increases in global temperature are now expected to be more disruptive than previously thought, the report concludes.
• The report, by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of experts convened by the United Nations, lays out a wide array of strategies that are available for reducing fossil-fuel emissions, such as scaling up wind and solar power, shifting to electric vehicles and electric heat pumps in buildings, curbing methane emissions from oil and gas operations, and protecting forests.
• While the next decade is almost certain to be hotter, scientists said the main takeaway from the report should be that nations still have enormous influence over the climate for the rest of the century.
• The report “is quite clear that whatever future we end up with is within our control,” said Piers Forster, a climate scientist at the University of Leeds who helped write one of the panel’s earlier reports.
• “It is up to humanity,” he added, “to determine what we end up with.”

Washington Post: World is on brink of catastrophic warming, UN climate change report says

• A dangerous climate threshold is near, but ‘it does not mean we are doomed’ if swift action is taken, IPCC scientists say.
• At our current global pace of carbon emissions, the world will burn through its remaining “carbon budget” by 2030. Doing so would put the long-term goal of keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) irrevocably out of reach.
• Not all hope is lost. Tackling global warming is an enormous feat, but there are many people, organizations and activists making bold strides. The Washington Post is tracking their stories in its Climate Solutions section.
• The IPCC calls for limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial temperatures — within a decade. Beyond that threshold, scientists have found, climate disasters will become so extreme people cannot adapt. Heat waves, famines and infectious diseases will claim millions of additional lives. Basic components of the Earth system will be fundamentally, irrevocably altered.
• Monday’s assessment synthesizes years of studies on the causes and consequences of rising temperatures, leading U.N. Secretary General António Guterres to demand that developed countries like the United States eliminate carbon emissions by 2040 — a decade earlier than the rest of the world.The world already has all the knowledge, tools and financial resources needed to achieve its climate goals, according to the IPCC. But after decades of disregarding scientific warnings and delaying climate efforts, it adds, humanity’s window for action is rapidly closing.
• Calling the report a “how-to guide to defuse the climate time-bomb,” Guterres announced on Monday an “acceleration agenda” that would speed up global actions on climate.
• Both the U.N. chief and the IPCC also called for the world to phase out coal, oil and gas, which are responsible for more than three quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions.
• These changes have caused irrevocable damage to communities and ecosystems, evidence shows: Fish populations are dwindling, farms are less productive, infectious diseases have multiplied, and weather disasters are escalating to unheard of extremes. The risks from this relatively low level of warming are turning out to be greater than scientists anticipated — not because of any flaw in their research, but because human-built infrastructure, social networks and economic systems have proved exceptionally vulnerable to even small amounts of climate change, the report said.
• The report also details how public officials, private investors and other powerful groups have repeatedly failed to heed those warnings. More than 40 percent of cumulative carbon emissions have occurred since 1990.
• The consumption habits of the wealthiest 10 percent of people generate three times as much pollution as those of the poorest 50 percent, the report said.
• Even as environmental ministers met in Switzerland last week to finalize the text of the IPCC report, the U.S. government approved a new Arctic drilling project that is expected produce oil for the next 30 years.
• “It’s not that we are depending on something that still needs to be invented,” she said. “We actually have all the knowledge we need. All the tools we need. We just need to implement it.” said Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London and a member of the core writing team for the report.