The United Nations has launched what The Telegraph is calling a “major new climate change report.”
In the report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims that rising emissions in recent years means that cuts in the next two decades will have to be more extreme than current plans.
According to The Telegraph:
An 80 per cent global reduction in CO2 emissions is needed to limit warming to 1.5C, the upper aim of the Paris Agreement, its new report says.
But the UN said richer countries must move faster than developing nations, by “super-charging” their net zero goals and helping poorer countries cut their own emissions.
The UK, like most other developed nations, has set a target for net zero emissions by 2050, and its climate change advisers have said getting there quicker will “stretch feasibility”.
Speaking at the launch of the report on Monday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said “humanity is on thin ice – and that ice is melting fast.”
“The climate time-bomb is ticking,” he said. He added that the 1.5C limit was “achievable”, but would require a “quantum leap in climate action.”
Developed countries should “commit to reaching net zero as close as possible to 2040” while emerging countries, including China and India, should aim for 2050.
The UK’s climate change committee, which advises the Government on its net zero goal, has modelled a way to reach the target by 2042.
It includes a 50 per cent reduction in meat and dairy consumption, a 15 per cent cut in air passenger levels compared to pre-pandemic levels, and the widespread acceptance of heat pumps in homes.
The CCC said it was a “highly optimistic scenario, stretching feasibility in a wide range of areas”.
Chris Jones, from the Met Office Hadley Centre, and a co-author of the report said the scale of the global challenge was “massive”.
“In 2020, during the Covid lockdowns CO2 emissions dropped by about 6 per cent,” he said. “So we need to achieve that year-on-year for the rest of this decade, and obviously we can’t do that by locking people down.”
The new report, which brings together six other IPCC publications since 2018, was agreed at the end of weeklong talks in the Swiss town of Interlaken and will be the last report from the UN until 2030, considered to be a crunch point for reducing emissions.
It says cash flows to help developing countries reduce their emissions must be increased six times above current levels to keep climate change to 1.5C.
And it highlights that richer countries have a greater responsibility for climate change and emissions, with the 10 per cent of highest emitting households, generally the most wealthy, contributing about 40 per cent of all emissions.
The bottom 50 per cent of highest emitters contribute just 13–15 per cent.
The report follows the push at the last Cop27 climate summit for compensation for poorer countries for the loss and damage caused by climate change. It will inform the next meeting, Cop28, to take place in the UAE later this year.
