Warming above 1.5C likely in near term unless world acts now, UN says

The report published today by the world’s leading climate science body, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, summarizes the panel’s output over the past five years, amounting to some 10,000 pages of dense scientific prose. This synthesis is succinct at 37 pages, and its message is blunt: Burning fossil fuels is threatening human well-being and the stability of much of life on Earth, and our chance to avoid the most severe impacts is fast moving out of reach.

“This report is a clarion call to massively fast-track climate efforts by every country and every sector and on every timeframe,” said UN Secretary General António Guterres in a statement on the report’s release. “In short, our world needs climate action on all fronts — everything, everywhere, all at once.”