The climate change panel of the U.N. warns that drastic action is needed
The climate change panel of the U.N. warns that drastic action is needed
According to a report by a scientific panel led by the United Nations, rapid and far-reaching changes are needed in almost all facets of society to avoid catastrophic climate change, reforms that go beyond what governments are doing. or plan to do.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change made the pronouncement as part of its assessment of climate change and efforts to mitigate its negative impact. The study emerged as a response to the more than 190 signatory nations of The Paris 2015 climate agreement, which at that time included the US administration. UU The Trump announced last year its intention to withdraw from the agreement.
The fact that countries do not reach voluntary targets to limit global warming to "well below" two degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, would be devastating for some ecosystems and raise sea levels to flood many major cities and some countries integers, among other risks, says the report.
The IPCC process brings together several scientists as lead authors to evaluate available scientific, technical and economic data on any topic related to climate change that they are covering. Part of that is peer-reviewed research, but the work also includes a work not peer-reviewed by governments and industry.
Typically, hundreds of scientists review drafts of IPCC authors, and government negotiators also have something to say in their conclusions, a practice that has generated criticism from scientists in the past. While a large body of scientific work concludes. Emissions cause global warming.Some dispute these conclusions.
The IPCC report concludes that meeting the carbon reduction goals would require drastic changes in the way citizens obtain energy, how industries produce everyday products and how cities are designed. It would put governments in the middle of routine decisions like how people use the land.
According to the report, renewable energy and improved efficiency are gaining ground, but avoiding catastrophic climate change would require much more effort, including unproven and risky attempts to extract carbon into the atmosphere.
The report, published after being completed in recent days during sessions in South Korea, comes in a year that has experienced historical heat waves. that have become deadly and disasters and rising sea levels that affect markets like insurance Y real estate.
To meet the objectives of the Paris agreement and reduce other risks, global carbon dioxide emissions levels for 2010 would have to be reduced by half by 2030 and effectively finish by around 2050, according to the IPCC report. Global emissions are not shrinking, and last year they rose to record levels after several years of remaining unchanged, despite cuts in emissions in the US. U.S., USA UU And some other countries, according to the International Energy Agency.
"Limiting heating to 1.5ºC is possible within the laws of chemistry and physics, but doing so would require unprecedented changes," said Jim Skea, co-chair of an IPCC working group.
International diplomats will meet in Poland later this year, followed by other meetings in the coming years, on how to enact and refine the objectives of the Paris agreement. The IPCC evaluation is supposed to help that.
The key to success will be extracting carbon from the atmosphere, the IPCC said. The accumulation of emissions over time means that limiting or eliminating emissions is not enough. The carbon that already exists in the atmosphere should be captured to prevent global warming from getting worse.
Options include forest restoration and technology to decrease the amount of acid in the oceans or extract carbon directly from the air. However, according to the report, all have not been tested, and there are few obvious ways to make this work profitable, by putting the costs of carbon reduction in governments.
"Climate change is one of those generational challenges that simply can not be resolved without diplomacy, without international cooperation," former Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement on the report. "This must be a moment of forced action for a renewed global approach."
The IPCC was the controversy issue In a 2009 dispute, after the launch of pirated emails, questions about its methodology emerged. A series of independent investigations after the hacking, allowed the institution claim to claim.
Under former President Barack Obama, Mr. Kerry led the negotiations that produced the Paris agreement, the first to demand that all developed and developing nations help curb global warming By limiting your greenhouse gas emissions.
Since then, Obama's successor, Donald Trump, promised to eliminate the US from the agreement. UU., The largest economy in the world, raising questions about the effectiveness of international efforts to address such a costly and complicated problem.
A weakness of the Paris agreement is its inability to address how nations could invest in the technologies needed to capture carbon emissions, said George David Banks, a former adviser to Mr. Trump on climate issues who supports the United States that remains the agreement.
"We have some of those discussions now, but they are not focused enough," he added. "The mere deployment of wind and solar farms in developing countries will not solve the problem."
The challenges are so great that every country and business sector will have to do more and act more quickly to curb global warming, said Lou Leonard, senior vice president of climate change and energy at the World Wildlife Fund.
"The reality is that the technology is there, we do know what to do," Leonard said. "But will we do it? That's a political question, not a technical question."
Write to Timothy Puko in tim.puko@wsj.com
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