Climate challengesDire Outlook on Global Warming: IPCC

The United Nations climate change panel says global warming is now a permanent feature of everyday life, but steps can still be taken to prevent the worst effects.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a long-awaited report Monday saying climate change is “unequivocally caused by human activities” that have led to a gradual warming of the Earth by just over 1.1 degrees Celsius since the preindustrial 19th century.

The IPCC warns that in 20 years, the world will likely reach — and even surpass — the 1.5-degree Celsius warming threshold that scientists have predicted will lead to irreversible changes such as melting glaciers, rising sea levels and devastating floods and droughts around the world.

However, the IPCC also says the world can mitigate the impacts of severe change through an immediate shift away from fossil fuels, the source of carbon emissions that have caused the so-called “greenhouse gas” effect, in which heat is trapped in Earth’s atmosphere instead of being released into space.

“The alarm bells are deafening,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Monday in a written statement about the report, which he called “a code red for humanity.”

Guterres said the new report “must sound a death knell for coal and fossil fuels,” urging the world’s developed nations to phase out existing coal plants, shift fossil fuel subsidies into renewable energy, quadruple solar and wind capacity and triple renewable energy investments by 2030.

The IPCC report, which was approved by 195 governments, will be the focus of the upcoming U.N. climate summit in Glasgow in November aimed at crafting a global strategy to combat climate change.  

This article is published courtesy of the Voice of America (VOA).