New Delhi: The world was put on “Code Red” alert on Monday to the threat from global warming, which is predicted to breach a 1.5C rise within decades, fuelling more floods, heatwaves, droughts and wildfires.
The dire warning came as a landmark report, by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which gave the most detailed and alarming projections yet on how climate change is damaging the planet. The Evening Standard reported the key conclusions include:
- Global warming of 1.5C and 2C, the limits countries have committed to avoid the most dangerous impacts of climate change, will be exceeded this century unless deep reductions in carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gas emissions occur in the coming decades.
- Just three years ago, scientists were predicting the 1.5C rise, from pre-industrial levels, was likely to be reached between 2030-2052 but this has now been brought forward to 2021-2040, going above this level in 2041-2060.
- The world is warming at a rate unprecedented in at least 2,000 years.
- Some of the changes already set in motion, such as a continued sea-level rise and melting ice sheets, are irreversible over hundreds to thousands of years.
- It is “unequivocal” that human activity has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.
- CO2 levels in the atmosphere are higher than they have been for three million years.
- The tide could be turned with the rise in global temperatures down to 1.4C by 2081-2100 under a “very low” greenhouse gas emissions scenario.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres said: “Today’s report is a Code Red for humanity. The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable: greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and deforestation are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk.”
Offering a ray of hope, he added: “If we combine forces now, we can avert climate catastrophe. But…there is no time for delay and no room for excuses.”
The study, agreed by 195 countries, will pile pressure on governments to finally commit to decisive action to stop catastrophic warming of the earth at the COP26 climate change summit in November in Glasgow.
