The IPCC special report on climate change

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report, published in October 2018, provided a massive alarm bell about the need to take urgent action to avoid the devastating consequences of human-induced climate change.

The IPCC is a United Nations body with responsibility for assessing the science related to climate change. Its special report said that limiting global warming to the level set out in the 2015 Paris Agreement will require urgent, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.

Global net human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) would need to fall by about 45% from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching “net-zero” around 2050. This means that any remaining emissions would need to be balanced by removing CO2 from the air.

It also explained there are just 12 years, until 2030, to make these massive changes in order to avoid the devastating consequences of allowing global temperature rises to exceed this limit.