Climate experts at the service of the United Nations (UN) have said that we have about three years to reverse the high carbon emissions – and less than a decade to cut that volume by almost 100% – if we are to live in an "applicable" environmental future.

The drastic statement was made during a presentation shown last Monday (4) by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Climatologists said these goals are still possible, but that the current policies of several countries are "leading the world to catastrophic temperature increases."

According to Antonio Guterres, the UN's climate change chief, the 2,800-page report presented by the IPCC lists "a series of broken promises" from several of the organization's partner nations. "Some governments and companies are saying one thing —but doing another. Speaking in simple terms, they're lying. And the results will be catastrophic," said the director.

"We are at a crossroads," said IPCC chief Hoesung Lee. "The decisions we make now can ensure a future where we can live normally. We have the tools and knowledge to limit [global] warming."

The first order of the report is to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 2025. This estimate sets the maximum time we have to stay within the humblest objectives of the Paris Climate Agreement, signed by 192 countries and the European Union. The idea of the agreement is that emissions grow no more than two degrees Celsius (2 ºC) compared to pre-Industrial Revolution levels. We are already at 1.1 ºC, but scientists claim that reaching 1.5 ºC will be a flirtation with the collapse of entire environmental systems.

In addition, by 2030, we have to lower carbon levels by 43% and by 2050 by 84%.

"It is now or never, so that we can limit global warming to 1.5 degrees," said Jim Skea, professor at imperial college London and co-leader of the group behind the report. "Without deep and immediate reductions in all sectors, this will be impossible."

To this end, the report indicates a series of actions: a reduction between 60% and 70% of the burning of any fossil fuel, noting that solar and wind (wind) energies today have structures with investments at equal prices – if not cheaper – than coal mines or oil extraction platforms.

Furthermore, the IPCC also recommends investing in technologies that absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, relieving the volume we have already dispersed up there. And it is wrong who thinks that the report is exclusively dedicated to governments and companies: the panel also highlights individual actions, such as avoiding long-distance flights, adopting diets more focused on plant consumption and reducing consumption of insums that make us spend more electricity, for example, between 40% and 70% by 2050.

"Individuals with high socioeconomic status contribute disproportionately to current emissions, but also have the greatest potential to reduce them —such as citizens, investors, professionals, and inspirational models," the document says.

Even the Russian-Ukrainian war was included in the complaint tone in the report: "it shares my heart, as a Ukrainian climate activist, to see that I am living in a war where fossil fuel money is at the center of it all," said Olha Boiko of the NGO Climate Action Network, which helped create the document. "The money for which we beg not to be used in dirty energy now flies over our heads in the form of bombs and missiles."

Source: Olhar Digital