U.N. report on climate change: A code red for humanity

Aug 9 - Eight years after its last full update on climate science, the United Nations published a report on Monday that delivered even harsher warnings about how human-induced climate change is affecting the planet and how damaging the impacts would get.

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change announced that human influence was unequivocally to blame for warming the planet, and that some forms of climate disruption have been locked in for centuries.

Without rapid and large reductions in emissions, the report said the average global temperature will exceed critical thresholds of 1.5 and 2.0 degrees Celsius during the 21 st century.

What are some early opinions on the IPCC report?

Today's IPCC Working Group 1 report is a code red for humanity. The alarm bells are in the sky and evidence is irrefutable: greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and deforestation are choking our planet and putting billions of people at risk. Global warming is affecting every region on Earth, with many of the changes becoming irreversible.

This report must sound a death knell for coal and fossil fuels before they destroy our planet.

Today's report makes for sober reading, and it is clear that the next decade will be pivotal to securing the future of our planet. How can we stop global warming? Consign coal to history and shift to clean energy sources, protect nature and provide climate finance for countries on the frontline.

I hope today's IPCC report will be a wake-up call for the world to take action now, before meeting in November in Glasgow for the critical COP 26 summit.

The effects of the climate crisis, from extreme heat to wildfires and floods to intense rainfall will only continue to increase unless we choose another course for ourselves and generations to come.

What the world requires right now is real action. Throughout this critical decade, all major economies will commit to aggressive climate action.

Diann Black-Layne, Ambassador of Antigua and Barbuda, Lead Climate Negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States:

Major emitters must take account for the damages inflicted by fossil fuel industry, knowing that every single tonne of carbon and every single dollar spent on fossil fuels will have a negative impact on the surrounding infrastructure.

If sea level rise continues to increase until 1.5 C, the stark fact is that we are already seeing a half a metre of water level rise. But if we stop warming from 2 C, we can avoid a long-term three metres of sea level rise. Mohamed Nasheed, Ambassador for the Climate Vulnerable Forum of 48 countries and Maldivian president:

Our people are dying in rich countries because of fossil fuel burning for consumption and economic growth in vulnerable developing countries. We pay with our lives for the carbon they emit. I will remove this injustice immediately in order to address it, which cannot be taken merely by human hands.

Paulo Artaxo, an IPCC lead author and environmental physicist at the University of Sao Paulo:

This is a clear message from France that we're changing climate in an irreversible way. So basically, we are damaging the climate in such a way to the next generation that this will surely make socioeconomic problems much worse in the future than our generation.

My personal opinion is that it will be impossible to limit the increase in temperature to 1.5 degrees.

Friederike Otto, an IPCC lead author and Associate Director of the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford:

Already, there are a lot of impacts of climate change in every region around the world. There are things which can be stopped from getting worse by keeping to the targets, but there are a lot of changes that are already here.

Helene Hewitt, a leading IPCC lead author and an Ocean Modelling Group Leader at Met Office's Hadley Centre:

Previous reports may have slightly underestimated the trend of Arctic sea ice in the past and now we are combining multiple lines of evidence that suggest that by 2050 we could see a practically sea-ice-free Arctic under all scenarios.

Kristina Dahl, a senior climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists:

While this report underscores the urgent need for climate action, prior IPCC reports and countless other studies, as well our lived experience, have already given us more than enough evidence to know that we are in the midst of a crisis brought primarily by fossil fuel industry and their political allies.

The report paints a very sobering picture of the unforgiving, unexamineable world that is envisaged if addiction to fossil fuels and destroying forests continues.

The Report: We're not going to let further inaction allow this report to be discarded. Instead we'll take it with us to the courts. By strengthening the scientific evidence between human emissions and extreme weather, the IPCC has provided powerful means for everyone to hold fossil fuel manufacturers and government directly accountable for the climate emergency.

'Amid a world in parts starving, in parts drowning and in parts burning, the IPCC today table the most compelling wake-up call for global industry to switch from oil, gas and coal to renewables. Governments must invoke law to compel this urgent change. Citizens must mobilize their political power and behavior to push polluting corporations and governments in the right direction. The IPCC tells us that limiting the average global warming to 1.5 C is going to be impossible but not impossible. This new report drills home the message that radical action is urgently needed to bring emissions down to real zero. Too often 'net zero' climate plans are being used to pollute pollution and business as usual, jeopardizing the goal of the Paris Agreement.

Wai-Shin Chan, Global Head of ESG Research at HSBC:

The science is crystal clear but the response is not. Investors must use their influence to push decision makers to make the bold emission reductions required to limit the most severe consequences of climate change.