Only the remaking of the human world in a generation can now prevent serious, far reaching and once-avoidable climate change impacts, according to a major UN report released on October 8, 2018. “The next few years are probably the most important in our history,” said Debra Roberts, co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) research into the impacts of warming. The IPPC, UN’s climate research agency said unequivocally that carbon pollution must fall to ‘net zero’ in around three decades in order to limit warming to 1.5C, compared to 2C The “Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty” responds to the invitation for IPCC ‘… to provide a report in 2018 on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways’ contained in the Decision of the 21st Conference of Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to adopt the Paris Agreement.1. The IPCC accepted the invitation in April 2016, deciding to prepare this Summary for Policy Makers (SPM) presents the key findings of the Special Report, based on the assessment of the available scientific, technical and socio-economic literature2 relevant to global warming of 1.5°C and for the comparison between global warming of 1.5°C and 2°C above preindustrial
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