UN chief Antonio Guterres says a major new report on climate change is a “survival guide for humanity”, as Matt McGrath and Georgina Rannard reports for BBC News.
Clean energy and technology can be exploited to avoid the growing climate disaster, the report says. But at a meeting in Switzerland to agree their findings, climate scientists warned a key global temperature goal will likely be missed.
UN secretary general Antonio Guterres says that all countries should bring forward their net zero plans by a decade. These targets are supposed to rapidly cut the greenhouse gas emissions that warm our planet’s atmosphere. “There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all,” the report states.
Governments had previously agreed to act to avoid global temperature rise going above 1.5C. But the world has already warmed by 1.1C and now experts say that it is likely to breach 1.5C in the 2030s.
The authors say that they are optimistic that dramatic changes can be achieved rapidly, pointing to the massive falls in the price of energy made from solar and wind. They also argue that changes driven by consumers in terms of diet, food waste and switching to low carbon transport can achieve significant cuts in emissions from many sectors.
Source: BBC News. Read the full story here
Cover image: Credit BBC News
