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UN report urges all-out climate push – now

The world can avoid the most dire impacts of climate change, but only if it quickly and dramatically reduces greenhouse gas emissions, according to a major United Nations report released today.

Without intentional and transformational steps to lower the amount of the heat-trapping gases humans send into the atmosphere the world’s temperature will continue to increase, with a host of ecological and economic consequences. 

Why We Wrote This

A new report sums up the known science on climate change – and walks a fine line between desperation and hope in an effort to spur a more forceful global response.

The report, from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, marks the conclusion of an eight-year, international effort to catalog the best and most current scientific understanding about climate change.

The authors seemed to be attempting to tread a fine line between conveying the desperate seriousness of the climate situation and also avoiding what has become known in climate circles as “doomerism” – the position that global warming is so bad and unfixable that there is nothing we can do about it. They recounted risks such as biodiversity loss and extreme weather from every fraction of a degree of warming, but also reiterated the ways societies can make the situation better.

“The climate time-bomb is ticking,” said U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres in a video message Monday. But the new report, he added, “is a survival guide for humanity.” 

The world can avoid the most dire impacts of climate change, but only if it quickly and dramatically reduces greenhouse gas emissions, according to a major United Nations report released today.

Without intentional and transformational steps to lower the amount of the heat-trapping gases humans send into the atmosphere – from ramping down fossil fuel production to significantly increasing the amount of funding for new climate technologies – the world’s temperature will continue to increase, with a host of ecological and economic consequences.  

“The climate time-bomb is ticking,” said U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres in a video message Monday. But the new report, he added, “is a survival guide for humanity.” 

Why We Wrote This

A new report sums up the known science on climate change – and walks a fine line between desperation and hope in an effort to spur a more forceful global response.

The report, from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, marks the conclusion of an eight-year, international effort that catalogs and analyzes the best and most current scientific understanding about climate change. It synthesizes a voluminous amount of research on everything from the physical science of the world’s climate system to the vulnerabilities of economies and ecosystems to ways of reducing the impact of global warming and building resilience. 

Martin Meissner/AP

The industrial backdrop of a BP refinery, a Uniper coal-fired power plant, and wind turbines is seen in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, March 6, 2023. A major new United Nations report released March 20, 2023, says nations must cut greenhouse gas emissions dramatically to avoid passing a dangerous global warming threshold.

While the science behind this “synthesis report” is not new (the IPCC has released a series of reports over the past years that detail the various components), it does connect the dots and reflects an international consensus about the best path forward. 

“It’s bringing the whole narrative together in one place,” says Rachel Cleetus, policy director with the Climate and Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

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