Scientists Just Laid Out Paths to Solve Climate Change. We Aren ’t on Track to Do Any of Them

Climate scientists have understood for decades that unchecked, man-made global warming will wreak havoc on human civilization. The challenge has only grown more urgent as the scientific understanding expands and the world begins to feel the impacts. Now, a landmark U.N. report offers both a glimmer of hope and a giant warning. Scientists and policymakers have the knowhow to address climate change and stave off some of the worst effects of the phenomenon, but political leaders are nowhere close to fully undertaking any of these steps, the report shows. Scientists on the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) point to a global temperature rise of 1.5°C as a threshold the planet cannot cross without seeing the worst effects of climate change. Yet according to the U.N. organization’s latest report, temperatures have already risen 1°C as a result of human activity, and the planet could pass the 1.5°C threshold as early as 2030 if greenhouse gas emissions continue at the current rate. “We need a plan to save us,” Mary Robinson, a former U.N. Special Envoy on Climate Change and a previous president of Ireland, tells TIME. “We have a short window of time and a huge responsibility.” To keep temperatures from rising more than 1.5°C, humans need to shift the trajectory of carbon dioxide emissions so that we either stop emitting by around 2050, or pull more carbon out of the atmosphere than we release. That̵...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized climate change onetime Source Type: news