The art installation Over Floe is seen at Ontario Place in Toronto, Canada, on June 15, 2021. Made of some waste construction materials by artist John Notten, the public art project Over Floe aims to illustrate the harm of human-caused global warming as ice sheets melt and oceans expand, threatening the way of life around the shorelines of the world.(Photo: Xinhua)

Humanity has less than three years to halt the rise of planet-warming carbon emissions and less than a decade to slash them by nearly half, UN climate experts said Monday, warning the world faced a last-gasp race to ensure a "livable future."

That daunting task is still - only just - possible, but current policies are leading the planet toward catastrophic temperature rises, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) made clear.

The world's nations, they said, are taking our future right to the wire.  

The 2,800-page report - by far the most comprehensive assessment of how to halt global heating ever produced - documents "a litany of broken climate promises," said UN chief Antonio Guterres in a blistering judgement of governments and industry.

"Some government and business leaders are saying one thing - but doing another. Simply put, they are lying. And the results will be catastrophic," Guterres said.

In recent months, the IPCC has published the first two installments in a trilogy of mammoth scientific assessments covering how greenhouse gas emissions are heating the planet and what that means for life on Earth.

This third report outlines what we can do about it.

"We are at a crossroads," said IPCC chief Hoesung Lee. "The decisions we make now can secure a livable future. We have the tools and know-how required to limit warming."
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said these tools "are firmly within our grasp. 

"Nations of the world must be brave enough to use them." 

The solutions touch on virtually all aspects of modern life, require significant investment and need "immediate action," the IPCC said.

The very first item on the global to-do list is to stop greenhouse gas emissions from rising any further. 

That must be done before 2025 to have a hope of keeping within even the Paris Agreement's less ambitious warming target of 2 C above preindustrial levels.

Barely 1.1 C of warming so far has ushered in a surge of deadly extreme weather across the globe.

The report makes clear that investments to cut emissions will be far less expensive than the cost of failing to limit warming. 

Scientists warn that any rise above 1.5 C risks the collapse of ecosystems and the triggering of irreversible shifts in the climate system. 

To achieve that target, the report said carbon emissions need to drop 43 percent by 2030 and 84 percent by mid-century.  

"It's now or never, if we want to limit global warming to 1.5 C," said Jim Skea, professor at Imperial College London and co-chair of the working group behind the report.

"Without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, it will be impossible."

AFP