A significant new assessment issued on Monday reveals that Earth is projected to cross a critical barrier for global warming within the next ten years, and nations will need to undertake an immediate and radical shift away from fossil fuels to save the planet from catastrophically boiling beyond that level.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of scientists assembled by the United Nations, released a report that provides the most thorough analysis of how the globe is changing to date.
According to the report, as long as people continue to burn coal, oil, and natural gas, the average world temperature is expected to increase by 1.5°C beyond preindustrial levels sometime in “the early part of the 2030s.”
In the context of international climate politics, that number is particularly significant because, as part of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, almost all countries committed to “pursue efforts” to keep global warming below 1.5°C.
Beyond that, according to scientists, humanity will find it far more difficult to cope with the effects of extreme heat waves, flooding, droughts, crop failures, and species extinction.
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But Earth has already warmed an average of 1.1℃ since the industrial age, and, with global fossil-fuel emissions setting records last year, that goal is quickly slipping out of reach.
There is still one last chance to shift course, the new report says. But it would require industrialized nations to join together immediately to slash greenhouse gases roughly in half by 2030 and then stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere altogether by the early 2050s.
If those two steps were taken, the world would have about a 50 percent chance of limiting warming to 1.5℃.
Delays of even a few years would most likely make that goal unattainable, guaranteeing a hotter, more perilous future.
The report comes as the world’s two biggest polluters, China, and the United States, continue to approve new fossil fuel projects.
Last year, China issued permits for 168 coal-fired power plants of various sizes, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air in Finland. Last week, the Biden administration approved an enormous oil drilling project known as Willow that will take place on pristine federal land in Alaska.
Story adapted from The New York Times
