UN warns world is heading past 1.5°C, but window to reverse warming remains

Jukwaa

📻 Breaking It Down

In a new report released Wednesday, UNEP said crossing 1.5°C would expose countries and communities to escalating climate risks, including more extreme weather, ecosystem losses, threats to food and water security and potentially irreversible changes to major climate systems.

The report, Limiting Overshoot , says the most viable remaining pathway is to allow warming to peak and then drive temperatures back down through deep emissions cuts and carefully governed carbon dioxide removal.

The report’s central message, however, is that crossing 1.5°C must not become a new climate normal.

📌 What You Need to Know

Instead, UNEP is calling for an “overshoot, peak and decline” strategy designed to keep temperatures above 1.5°C for the shortest possible period and return the planet below the threshold as quickly as possible.

The pathway would require immediate and sustained cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, including methane, a rapid transition away from fossil fuels and eventual achievement of net-zero emissions. In the longer term, the world would also need net-negative emissions, supported by carefully governed carbon dioxide removal.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres said recent extreme weather events were a warning of the consequences of continued warming.

“This summer’s scorching heat, raging wildfires and deadly floods are a warning of what lies ahead,” Guterres said, calling for an “overshoot of ambition” to ensure any period above 1.5°C is as small and short as possible.

UNEP says the stakes will rise with every additional fraction of a degree above 1.5°C.

Higher temperatures are expected to intensify extreme weather, accelerate ecosystem losses and increase threats to food and water security, human health, infrastructure and economies.

📰 Source: Capital FM Kenya

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