This is very sobering news. Scientists and government representatives have recently published the IPCC report 2022 and the results are devastating.
The report outlines that between 2010 and 2019 average annual global greenhouse gas emissions were at their highest levels in human history. The rate of growth has since slowed coinciding with increasing climate action, but even if all the policies to cut carbon that governments had put in place by the end of 2020 were fully implemented, the world will still warm by 3.2C this century.
These temperature increases would result in “unprecedented heatwaves, terrifying storms, and widespread water shortages”.
The time to prevent and mitigate global warming has quickly passed us by; but there is hope. Jim Skier, Co-chair of Working Group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has stated that “It’s now or never, if we want to limit global warming to 1.5C”.
The IPCC summary shows that it can be done, in what Mr Guterres, Portuguese politician and diplomat, calls a “viable and financially sound manner”; but keeping temperatures down will require massive changes to energy production, industry, transport, our consumption patterns and the way we treat nature.
Guterres, has expressed that: “Some government and business leaders are saying one thing – but doing another. Simply put, they are lying and the results will be catastrophic.”
One thing is certain, if we wait for our governments to act, we may have to continue to wait.
