AFP

Humanity has less than three years to halt the rise of planet-warming carbon emissions and less than a decade to slash them by nearly half, UN climate experts said Monday, warning the world faced a last-gasp race to ensure a “liveable future”.

That daunting task is still — only just — possible, but current policies are leading the planet towards catastrophic temperature rises, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) made clear.

The world’s nations, they said, are taking our future right to the wire. 

The 2,800-page report — by far the most comprehensive assessment of how to halt global heating ever produced — documents “a litany of broken climate promises”, said UN chief Antonio Guterres in a blistering judgement of governments and industry.

“Some government and business leaders are saying one thing — but doing another. Simply put, they are lying. And the results will be catastrophic,” Guterres said.

In recent months, the IPCC has published the first two instalments in a trilogy of mammoth scientific assessments covering how greenhouse gas emissions are heating the planet and what that means for life on Earth.

This third report outlines what we can do about it.

“We are at a crossroads,” said IPCC chief Hoesung Lee. “The decisions we make now can secure a liveable future. We have the tools and know-how required to limit warming.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said these tools “are firmly within our grasp”: “Nations of the world must be brave enough to use them.” 

The solutions touch on virtually all aspects of modern life, require significant investment and need “immediate action”, the IPCC said.

The very first item on the global to-do list is to stop greenhouse gas emissions from rising any further. 

That must be done before 2025 to have a hope of keeping within even the Paris Agreement’s less ambitious warming target of two degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.

Barely 1.1C of warming so far has ushered in a surge of deadly extreme weather across the globe.

The report makes clear that investments to cut emissions will be far less expensive than the cost of failing to limit warming. 

Scientists warn that any rise above 1.5C risks the collapse of ecosystems and the triggering of irreversible shifts in the climate system. 

To achieve that target, the report said carbon emissions need to drop 43 percent by 2030 and 84 percent by mid-century.  

“It’s now or never, if we want to limit global warming to 1.5C,” said Jim Skea, a professor at Imperial College London and co-chair of the working group behind the report. 

“Without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, it will be impossible.”

– Slashing coal, oil, gas –

To do that the world must radically reduce the fossil fuels behind the lion’s share of emissions. 

Nations should stop burning coal completely and cut oil and gas use by 60 and 70 percent respectively to keep within the Paris goals, the IPCC said, noting that both solar and wind were now cheaper than fossil fuels in many places.

But cutting emissions is no longer enough, the IPCC said. Technologies to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere — not yet operating to scale — will need to be ramped up enormously.

While government policies, investments and regulations will propel emissions cuts, the IPCC made clear that individuals can also make a big difference.

Cutting back on long-haul flights, switching to plant-based diets, climate-proofing buildings and other ways of cutting the consumption that drives energy demand could reduce greenhouse gas emissions 40 to 70 percent by 2050. 

Those with the most, also pollute the most, the report said. 

Households whose income is in the top 10 percent globally — two thirds of whom are in developed countries — emit up to 45 percent of carbon pollution. 

“Individuals with high socio-economic status contribute disproportionately to emissions and have the highest potential for emissions reductions — as citizens, investors, consumers, role models and professionals,” the IPCC said. 

– Fuel for war –

For 2019, if energy consumption is included, industry accounted for 34 percent of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions; agriculture, forestry and land use was 22 percent; transport 15 percent; buildings 16 percent; and the energy supply sector 12 percent.  

The report’s finding will feed into high-level UN political negotiations, which resume in November in Egypt at COP 27. 

Recently updated national climate pledges emerging from these talks still put the 1.5C target “beyond reach”, the report warned.

With war in Ukraine spurring efforts to transition away from Russian oil and gas in the West, observers said the report should sharpen nations’ focus on climate commitments. 

“It is heart-breaking for me, as a Ukrainian climate activist, to be living through a war which has fossil fuel money at its core,” said Olha Boiko, an activist from the Climate Action Network, based in Ukraine. 

“The money, that we begged not to invest in dirty energy, is now flying over our heads in the form of bombs.”

Individuals along with economy-wide efficiencies can make a major difference in the drive to avert the worst of global warming, UN climate experts say, estimating that sharp cuts to demand for energy-guzzling services could slash emissions up to 70 percent by 2050.   

Avoiding airplanes, eating less meat, insulating your home could all make a dent, particularly when broad swathes of societies embrace change, says the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  

While research often focuses on cutting emissions in the supply of goods and services — energy generation, transport, agriculture, construction — the IPCC has for the first time dedicated a whole chapter of its climate solutions report to the demand that drives these industries.  

“Having the right policies, infrastructure and technology in place to enable changes to our lifestyles and behaviours can result in a 40-70 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050,” said Priyadarshi Shukla co-chair of IPCC working group that produced the 3,000 page report.

But where can “this untapped potential”, as Shukla calls it, be found?

– Day-to-day choices –

“Avoid, shift, improve” — these are the key ways to curb demand, the report says. 

You can avoid energy-intensive behaviour, switch to low-carbon technologies and improve the efficiency of existing tech. 

In general, there are plenty of opportunities for improvement in the ways people travel from point A to point B. 

You can change an internal combustion engine car to an electric one (“improve”), or even “shift” your daily commute to cycling or walking.   

The biggest potential for avoidance is reducing long-haul flights. If people took fewer long distance flights and took the train where possible, overall aviation emissions could be reduced by 10 to 40 percent by 2040. 

Meanwhile, increasing energy efficiency in homes and other buildings takes first place in the “improve” category. 

And the most important “shift” you can make is to adopt a plant-based diet. But becoming a vegetarian or even vegan would have less of an emissions impact than cutting out one long-haul flight a year. 

The report also highlights the need to reduce all types of waste, from energy or food for example. 

“Choosing low-carbon options, such as car-free living, plant-based diets without or very little animal products, low-carbon sources of electricity and heating at home as well as local holiday plans,” can reduce an individual’s carbon footprint by up to nine tonnes of CO2 equivalent, says the IPCC. 

– Unequal –

Most people in the world never take long-haul flights in the first place and do not have access to nutritious food. 

Billions of people have a carbon footprint far below nine tonnes of CO2 equivalent.  

For example, the average carbon footprint per inhabitant in Afghanistan is less than one tonne, according to the report, while in most western developed nations it is well over 10 tonnes. 

And within countries there can also be an enormous split between the lavish energy consumption of the rich and the meagre carbon footprint of poorer people. 

In fact, about half of the world’s emissions can be attributed to the consumption of the richest 10 percent of the global population, the report said.

At the bottom of the wealth pyramid, the poorest half of the world contributes around 10 percent of consumption emissions.  

“Wealthy individuals contribute disproportionately to higher emissions and have a high potential for emissions reductions while maintaining decent living standards and well-being,” the report said. 

– Beyond behaviour – 

The responsibility for transforming the world’s energy use and economic system to deal with climate change cannot be borne on the shoulders of individuals alone, the report stresses. 

While people can make a difference with their lifestyle choices, the IPCC says transformative change involves more than just individuals’ consumption choices. 

There also need to be shifts in culture and social norms, business investment, political drivers from institutions, and changes in infrastructure. 

Accelerating global warming is driving a rising tide of impacts that could cause profound human misery and ecological disaster, and there is only one way to avoid catastrophe: drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Spread across 10,000 pages, these are the main takeaways from a trio of UN reports on climate change published in August 2021, February 2022 and on Monday. The three tomes — each with its own roster of hundreds of authors — focus on physical science, impacts and the need to adapt, and finally how to slash carbon pollution. 

This will be the sixth such trilogy since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) delivered its first report in 1990 and positioned itself as the final word on the science behind global warming.

Here are five key findings from the three reports:

– Beyond a doubt –

Whatever climate sceptics might say, scientific evidence has removed any lingering doubt that human activity is “unequivocally” responsible for global warming, which has seen the planet heat up an average of 1.1 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.

The atmospheric concentration of CO2 — the main driver of warming, emitted mainly by burning fossil fuels — rose at least 10 times faster between 1900 and 2019 than any time in the last 800,000 years, and is at its highest in two million years.

– Bye bye 1.5C? –

The 2015 Paris Agreement calls for capping global warming “well below” 2C, and 1.5C if possible. A crescendo of deadly impacts already being felt and a slew of new science has led most countries to embrace the more ambitious aspirational goal. 

But that ship may have sailed. 

In every IPCC projection for a liveable future, Earth’s average surface temperature increases by 1.5C or 1.6C by around 2030 — a decade earlier than estimates made only a few years ago. 

In theory, it will be possible to cap temperature increases to below the 1.5C threshold by the end of the century, but even a temporary “overshoot” could cause irreversible damage to fragile ecosystems at the poles, in the mountains, and in coastal areas. 

If countries do not improve on the emissions reduction pledges running to 2030, made under the Paris treaty, even staying under 2C will be a serious challenge. Current national policies would see Earth warm 3.2C by 2100.

– Avalanche of suffering –

Once a problem on the distant horizon, the devastating consequences of climate change have become a here-and-now reality. Nearly half the world’s population — between 3.3 and 3.6 billion — are “very vulnerable” to global warming’s deadly impacts, which are certain to get worse.

Heatwaves so extreme as to literally be unliveable; superstorms made more deadly by a water-logged atmosphere and rising seas; drought, water shortages, more disease-carrying mosquitoes and ticks… 

These and other impacts are set to become worse, and will disproportionately ravage Earth’s most vulnerable populations, including indigenous peoples. 

Hundreds of millions could eventually be forced from their homes by sea levels — pushed up mainly by melting ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica — that will continue to rise across the next century no matter how quickly humanity draws down emissions.

Even if global heating is capped at 2C, oceans could gain half-a-metre by 2100 and two metres by 2300, double the IPCC’s estimate from 2019.

– Only option left – 

The IPCC insists that it does not provide recommendations, only background information and policy options so decision makers can make the right choices to ensure a “liveable future” for the planet and its inhabitants. 

But all roads leadiing to a 1.5C or even a 2C world “involve rapid and deep and in most cases immediate greenhouse gas emissions reductions in all sectors” — including industry, transportation, agriculture, energy and cities.  

Hitting those temperature goals will require a massive reduction in fossil fuel use, the IPCC says: 90 percent, 25 percent and 40 percent less coal, gas and oil, respectively, by 2050, and 90 percent, 40 percent and 80 percent less by 2100.

The use of coal plants that do not deploy carbon capture technology to offset some of their pollution to generate power must decline by 70 to 90 percent within eight years.

– Tipping points –

The new trio of IPCC reports emphasise as never before the danger of “tipping points”, temperature thresholds in the climate system that could, once crossed, result in catastrophic and irreversible change.  

The good news is that we seem to have pulled back from emissions scenarios from human sources that could by themselves result in a 4C or 5C world. The bad news is that “low probability/high impact” tipping point scenarios in nature could lead us there all the same. 

The disintegration of ice sheets that would lift ocean levels a dozen metres or more; the melting of permafrost containing vast stores of the same greenhouse gases we are desperately trying to keep out of the atmosphere; the transformation of the Amazon basin from tropical forest to savannah — all could be triggered by additional global warming.  

Where are those triggers? Scientists are not sure, but they do know that the risk is much higher in a world that has warmed 2C above 19th-century levels than one that has warmed 1.5C. 

Above 2.5C, the risk is “very high”.

French wine and fruit growers were hit by the coldest April day since 1947 overnight Sunday and early Monday, the second straight year they have suffered freak spring weather.

Growers burned candles, sprayed water and used wind turbines in efforts to protect their crops as temperatures fell below the freezing point, with a record minus 9.3C in Mourmelon in the Marne department east of Paris.

Experts say freak weather events are increasingly common due to climate change.

Temperatures rose on Monday, according to Meteo France forecaster Patrick Galois, but he warned that freezing weather would still occur between the southwest and central France.

Growers fear the worst.

“It’s very bad. It hit hard overnight. A lot of fruit growers are affected,” Christiane Lambert, president of the FNSEA farmers’ union, told AFP.

The agriculture ministry said it was “too early” to draw conclusions about the damage.

“The damage is only visible after a few days,” it said.

Fruit trees are more vulnerable than vineyards this year, the ministry said.

In the Tarn-et-Garonne department in the southwest, Damien Garrigues sprayed his apple trees to cover buds in ice in a bid to protect them from even lower temperatures.

“For now it’s not as bad as last year,” he said, noting he lost 20 percent of production in 2021.

In Agen in the neighbouring Lot-et-Garonne department, “big losses” are expected for plum growers but not as bad as last year, when “100 percent” were ruined by the cold snap, said Remy Muller, an adviser at the department’s chamber of agriculture.

A wind turbine was used in Eric Chadourne’s vineyard in Bergerac, also in the southwest, in a bit to limit the damage.

But elsewhere, “all early buds, merlot, white grapes and malbec are frozen,” Chadourne said.

A cold snap in April last year cut the harvest of apricots, cherries and pears by half compared to previous years, according to official statistics.

Wine production also fell to a historically low level, down 19 percent on an annual basis.

Prime Minister Jean Castex said money from an emergency fund may be released if necessary to help producers.

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Humanity has less than three years to halt the rise of planet-warming carbon emissions and less than a decade to slash them almost in half, the UN said Monday in a landmark report on stopping global warming and ensuring a “liveable future”.

That daunting task is still — and only just — possible, but current policies are leading the planet towards catastrophic temperature rises, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) made clear.

The world’s nations, they said, are taking our future right to the wire. 

The 2,800-page report — by far the most comprehensive assessment of how to halt global heating ever produced — documents to “a litany of broken climate promises”, said UN chief Antonio Guterres in a blistering judgement of governments and industry.   

“Some government and business leaders are saying one thing — but doing another. Simply put, they are lying. And the results will be catastrophic,” Guterres said in a video message released at the same time as the UN report.

In recent months, the IPCC has published the first two instalments in a trilogy of mammoth scientific assessments covering how greenhouse gas emissions are heating the planet and what that means for life on Earth.

This third report outlines what we can do about it.

“We are at a crossroads,” said IPCC chief Hoesung Lee. “The decisions we make now can secure a liveable future. We have the tools and know-how required to limit warming.” 

There are solutions, the report says, but they touch on virtually all aspects of modern life and require significant investment and need “immediate action”.

The very first item on the global to-do list is to stop greenhouse gas emissions from rising any further. 

That must be done before 2025 to have a hope of keeping within even the less ambitious warming targets of the Paris deal of two degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. 

Scenarios of catastrophic 2.5C of warming also have emissions peaking within three years.

Beyond that, the report said carbon emissions need to drop 43 percent by 2030 and 84 percent by mid-century to meet the more ambitious Paris goal of 1.5C.  

“It’s now or never, if we want to limit global warming to 1.5C,” said Jim Skea, a professor at Imperial College London and co-chair of the working group behind the report. 

“Without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, it will be impossible.”

And cutting emissions is no longer enough, the IPCC said. Technologies to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere — not yet operating to scale — will need to be ramped up enormously.

– Fossil fuels –

The 1.5C target is presently “beyond reach”, even with the most updated global climate pledges, the IPCC said.

To get there the world must radically reduce the fossil fuels behind the lion’s share of emissions. 

Nations should stop burning coal completely and slash oil and gas use by 60 and 70 percent respectively to keep within the Paris goals, the IPCC said. 

It warned that current fossil fuel infrastructure, if used to the end of its expected lifetime without capturing carbon emissions, would make it impossible to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, the IPCC said.

While government policies, investments and regulations will propel emissions cuts, the IPCC made clear that individuals can also make a big difference.

Cutting back on long-haul flights, switching to plant-based diets, climate-proofing buildings and other ways of cutting the consumption that drives energy demand could reduce greenhouse gas emissions 40 to 70 percent by 2050. 

“Rapid and deep changes in demand make it easier for every sector to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” including construction, food consumption and transport, the report said.

With war in Ukraine spurring urgent efforts to transition away from Russian oil and gas in the West, observers said the report should sharpen nations’ focus on climate commitments. 

A full 99 percent of people on Earth breathe air containing too many pollutants, the World Health Organization said Monday, blaming poor air quality for millions of deaths each year.

Fresh data from the UN health agency showed that every corner of the globe is dealing with air pollution, although the problem is much worse in poorer countries.

“Almost 100 percent of the global population is still breathing air that exceeds the standards recommended by the World Health Organization,” the agency’s environment, climate change and health director Maria Neira told reporters.

“This is a major public health issue.”

In its previous report four years ago, WHO had already found that over 90 percent of the global population was affected, but it has since tightened its limits, it said.

“The evidence base for the harm caused by air pollution has been growing rapidly and points to significant harm caused by even low levels of many air pollutants,” WHO said. 

While UN data last year indicated that pandemic lockdowns and travel restrictions caused short-lived improvements in air quality, WHO said air pollution remains a towering problem.

“After surviving a pandemic, it is unacceptable to still have seven million preventable deaths and countless preventable lost years of good health due to air pollution,” Neira said.

– ‘Healthier energy systems’ –

WHO’s study provides air quality data from more than 6,000 cities and other settlements across 117 countries — representing around 80 percent of urban settings. 

In addition, Neira said WHO used satellite data and mathematical models to determine that air quality is falling short basically everywhere.

The poorest air quality was found in the eastern Mediterranean and Southeast Asia regions, and Africa, she said.

The findings were alarming, the organisation said, and highlighted the importance of rapidly curbing fossil fuel use.  

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stressed that worries over soaring energy prices, due in part to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, should help propel change.

“Current energy concerns highlight the importance of speeding up the transition to cleaner, healthier energy systems,” he said in a statement.

“High fossil fuel prices, energy security, and the urgency of addressing the twin health challenges of air pollution and climate change, underscore the pressing need to move faster towards a world that is much less dependent on fossil fuels.”

– Worse in poorer countries –

The report provides data on concentrations of dangerous particulate matter with a diameter of between 2.5 and 10 micrometres (PM10), and particles with a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometres (PM2.5).

PM2.5 includes toxins like sulfate and black carbon, which pose the greatest health risks since they can penetrate deep into the lungs or cardiovascular system.

And for the first time, the report also provides ground measurements of annual mean concentrations of nitrogen dioxide (NO2), a common urban pollutant, which is associated with respiratory diseases, particularly asthma.

The report found problems related to particulate pollution were far worse in poorer countries, but that most cities had trouble with nitrogen dioxide.

While the air in 17 percent of cities in high-income countries fell below WHO’s air quality guidelines for PM2.5 or PM10, less than one percent of cities in low and middle-income countries complied with the recommended thresholds, the report said.

Out of the around 4,000 cities across 74 countries that collected NO2 data, measurements meanwhile showed only 23 percent of people breathed annual average concentrations of the gas that met levels in WHO’s recently updated guidelines.