Climate panel calls for “rapid and deep” transition away from fossil fuels.
Nations have moved too slowly to curb climate change, and now must take swift and aggressive steps if they hope to avoid the worst impacts of global warming, the world’s top scientists warned on Monday. Greenhouse gas emissions must peak within the next three years, and in the next eight, the world must push fossil fuels aside, rapidly scaling up the use of clean energy like wind and solar. It is only through these “rapid and deep” emissions reductions, they said, that the world can get on track to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 and avoid 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming.
A new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC — a United Nations body of leading climate experts from around the world — highlights key strategies countries can use to drive down greenhouse gas emissions and remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. There is no time to lose, the report authors said. Although emissions are rising more slowly than they have in previous years, humanity has lost precious time to drive down climate pollution, and even with the most ambitious policies, there is now only a 38 percent chance that the world will stave off a 1.5-degree C rise in temperature. This is a significant decrease from 2018, when the panel predicted a 55 percent chance of staying below that threshold.
“We are at a crossroads,” IPCC chair Hoesung Lee, an economist at Korea University in Seoul, South Korea, told reporters. “We have the tools and know-how to limit warming and secure a livable future.”
The new report is the final installment in a three-part assessment from the IPCC. The body’s previous reports detailed both the current and future catastrophic impacts from climate change and warned that time is running out to adapt to them. This week’s report focuses on mitigation — what we can do to halt climate change.
The authors’ top recommendation: Immediately move away from fossil fuels and replace them with renewable technologies. According to the panel’s calculations, the climate pollution associated with existing and planned fossil fuel infrastructure is already enough to launch the planet past 1.5 degrees C and potentially past 2 degrees C of warming. New fossil fuel infrastructure is incompatible with international climate goals, and up to $4 trillion of fossil fuels and related infrastructure will likely have to be abandoned by 2050 in order to keep within safe temperature limits. Coal use must virtually end, the report added, while oil and gas use must fall by 60 and 45 percent, respectively.
“Investing in new fossil fuel infrastructure is moral and economic madness,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement to reporters. “Such investments will soon be stranded assets, a blot on the landscape, and a blight on investment portfolios.”
Political barriers — rather than scientific, monetary, or technological ones — are currently holding the world back from urgent climate targets, the report stressed. Although some countries’ policies have helped avoid significant carbon emissions, world governments are still disproportionately investing in fossil fuels rather than renewable energy. Existing capital and technology are sufficient to keep climate goals within reach, the authors said, and could be leveraged to effect “major transitions” toward wind, solar, and other renewable technologies — many of which have become much cheaper since the IPCC’s fifth assessment report was released in 2014. Some countries have already made the switch to energy systems that are mostly powered with renewables, and there are a number of systemic solutions — smart grids, energy storage, green hydrogen — that can help others make similar progress.
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