Nations need to triple carbon-cutting measures to stop runaway climate change, experts warn
Countries need to triple their carbon-cutting ambition to stop the runaway effects of climate change, experts have warned.
The World Meteorological Organisation has urged countries to set new carbon-cutting targets, and revealed that the last five years were the hottest in recorded history.
The report said that the world has warmed 1.1C since pre-industrial times, but has warmed 0.2C in 2015-2019, compared to the previous five years.
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WMO Secretary General Petteri Taalas said at a United Nations summit: ‘We are concerned that an abrupt decline in the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets will exacerbate future rise.
‘As we have seen in the Bahamas and Mozambique, sea level rise and intense tropical storms led to humanitarian and economic disaster.
‘To stop a global temperature increase of more than 2C above pre-industrial levels, the level of (carbon-cutting) ambition needs to be tripled, and to limit the increase to 1.5C, it needs to be multiplied by five.’
Professor Dave Reay, of the University of Edinburgh, said that the WMO report read like a ‘credit card statement after a five-year-long spending binge’.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres opened the Climate Action Summit on Monday by saying: ‘Earth is issuing a chilling cry: Stop.’
Guterres told world leaders that it's not a time to negotiate but to act to make the world carbon neutral by 2050.
He wants to limit global temperature increases to a few more tenths of a degree, and he said the world can do it.
French President Emmanuel Macron reminded his colleagues that they need to include climate change in their trade and finance policies.
Macron said countries should not import goods that increase carbon pollution nor fund polluting plants in other countries.
