WASHINGTON DC – The United Nations’ climate change panel is calling for a “substantial reduction” in the global use of fossil fuels in order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
Warning there is limited time to act, the latest report from the panel says that by 2030, greenhouse gas emissions need to be cut by at least 43 percent to prevent 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming at the end of the century — a key threshold that would help the world evade much of the potential climate damage.
“We have a really, really stark task ahead of us,” said Stephanie Roe, a lead author of the report and global climate and energy lead scientist at the World Wildlife Fund.
The report also calls for emissions to reach their peak in the next few years, before 2025 at the latest.
Jim Skea, co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which produced the report, warned that the next few years are critical. “It’s now or never, if we want to limit global warming to 1.5°C,” Skea said in a statement.
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