UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday urged rich countries to speed up the transition to “net zero” emissions after a new assessment by scientists warned there was no time to lose in the fight against climate change, the BBC and The Guardian reported.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC or IPCC, in the French international abbreviation), consisting of the world’s most important scientists, presented on Monday the final part of the sixth assessment report, News.ro notes.

Scientists have issued a “final warning” about the climate crisis as rising greenhouse gas emissions push the world to the brink of irreversible damage that can only be avoided by swift and decisive action.

It took hundreds of scientists eight years to compile this comprehensive analysis of human knowledge about the climate crisis. The report is thousands of pages long, but it boils down to one thing: act now or it will be too late.

UN chief Antonio Guterres said the new report on climate change is a “manual for humanity’s survival”.

According to the report, clean energy and technology can be used to prevent a growing climate disaster. But at a meeting in Switzerland to agree their findings, climate scientists warned that a key global temperature target was unlikely to be met. Their report shows how rapid reductions in fossil fuel consumption can avoid the worst effects of climate change.

Plans to reduce emissions to zero should be postponed for 10 years

In response to these findings, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said that all countries should advance their plans to reduce net emissions by 10 years. These goals must quickly reduce greenhouse gas emissions that heat the planet’s atmosphere.

“Developed country leaders must commit to achieving net zero as close to 2040 as possible, a limit they should all strive to achieve,” he said in a statement. Guterres is also urging countries such as India and China, which have announced net-zero emission plans for the period after 2050, to also try to get ahead of them by a decade.

“There is a window of opportunity, but it is closing fast to ensure a tolerable and sustainable future for all,” the report said.

Governments have previously agreed to act to avoid a rise in global temperatures of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. But the world has already warmed by 1.1 degrees Celsius, and now experts say it could exceed 1.5 degrees in the 2030s.

The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – the scientific body that advises the UN on rising temperatures – has been endorsed by all governments involved.

Their new study aims to summarize several landmark findings on the causes, effects and solutions to climate change that have been published since 2018. It highlights the significant impact of climate change on the world and explains why it will get worse.

Floods that used to occur once a century will now occur annually in some parts of the world

Extreme weather events caused by climate change have led to increased deaths from intensifying heat waves in all regions, millions of lives and homes destroyed by droughts and floods, millions of people at risk of starvation and “increasingly irreversible losses” of vital ecosystems.

According to the IPCC, more than 3 billion people already live in areas “highly vulnerable” to climate change, and half the world’s population now faces severe water shortages for at least part of the year. The report warns that in many regions the limit to which people can adapt to these major changes has already been reached, and extreme weather events are “increasingly driving displacement” of people in Africa, Asia, North, Central and South America. South and in the southern part of the Pacific Ocean.

By 2100, extreme coastal flooding that used to occur once a century is expected to occur at least once a year in half of the places in the world where tides have been measured.

The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, a warming gas, has reached its highest level in 2 million years. The world is currently warmer than at any time in the last 125,000 years, and is likely to warm even more in the next decade.

“Even in the short term, it is very likely that global warming will reach 1.5 degrees Celsius even under a scenario with very low greenhouse gas emissions,” the report said.

“If we aim for 1.5 degrees Celsius and get to 1.6 degrees Celsius, that’s still a lot better than saying it’s too late, we’re doomed, and we don’t even try anymore,” Dr Friederike told BBC News Otto of Imperial College, a member of the authoring group for this report. “And I think this report shows very, very clearly that we can gain a lot if we try,” commented the expert.

The opening of new fossil fuel infrastructure eats up the remaining carbon budget

The synthesis shows that projected CO2 emissions from existing fossil fuel infrastructure, such as oil wells and gas pipelines, will destroy the residual carbon “budget” – the amount of CO2 that can still be emitted – to stay below this threshold – the key to temperature. Although they do not directly mention new projects such as Willow Oil in the US or Cumbria Coal Mine in the UK, the scientists involved do not doubt their impact. “There is no cut-off date (for fossil fuels), but it is clear that the fossil fuel infrastructure we already have will exceed this carbon budget,” Oliver Geden of the German Institute for International Affairs and Trade told BBC News. Security, also a member of the report writing team.

“The remaining carbon budget for the opening of new fossil fuel infrastructures is certainly not compatible with the 1.5 degrees Celsius target,” the expert emphasized.

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On the other hand, the authors say they are optimistic that significant changes can be made quickly, pointing to significant drops in solar and wind prices.

They also argue that changes in consumer eating habits, food waste and a shift to low-carbon transport could lead to significant reductions in emissions across many sectors.

But the report also acknowledges that, in addition to achieving net zero emissions as quickly as possible, widespread use of carbon removal technology will be required. Scientists say this is a realistic plan to bring Earth’s temperature back under control and keep warming below 1.5C.

Pressure from Saudi Arabia

But some observers are skeptical, saying the technologies are not well-certified enough to be effective, the BBC notes.

“We know what’s going to happen, but the ideas of carbon removal and carbon capture and storage are very distracting,” said Lily Fuhr of the Center for International Environmental Law, who attended the hearing to approve the report. “But I think the proponents of these technologies will turn it around and say it’s a massive call for investment in decarbonisation,” she warned.

The final section of the report is a “summary for policy makers” written by IPCC scientists, but reviewed by representatives of governments around the world who can – and have – contributed to change.

According to The Guardian, in the final hours of the weekend debate in the Swiss resort of Interlaken, a large Saudi delegation of at least 10 representatives pressed for several points to water down the messages. on fossil fuels and to introduce references to carbon capture and storage, presented by some as a means of avoiding fossil fuels, but which has yet to be proven to work on a large scale.