UN chief urges 'rapid' emission cuts to curb climate change

GENEVA – The caput of the United Nations called Thursday for “immediate, accelerated and large-scale” cuts successful greenhouse state emissions to curb planetary warming and avert clime disaster.

Ahead of the yearly U.N. General Assembly gathering adjacent week, Antonio Guterres warned governments that clime alteration is proceeding faster than predicted and fossil substance emissions person already bounced backmost from a pandemic dip.

Speaking astatine the motorboat of a U.N.-backed study summarizing existent efforts to tackle clime change, Guterres said caller utmost upwind — from Hurricane Ida successful the United States to floods successful occidental Europe and the deadly heatwave successful the Pacific Northwest — showed nary state is harmless from climate-related disasters.

“These changes are conscionable the opening of worse to come," helium said, appealing to governments to conscionable the goals of the 2015 Paris clime accord.

“Unless determination are immediate, accelerated and large-scale reductions successful greenhouse state emissions, we volition beryllium incapable to bounds planetary heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit),” said Guterres. “The consequences volition beryllium catastrophic.”

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In their report, titled United successful Science 21, six U.N. bodies and technological organizations drew connected existing probe to reason that determination is simply a nonstop nexus betwixt human-caused emissions, grounds precocious temperatures and disasters that person a tangible interaction connected individuals and societies, including "billions of enactment hours (...) mislaid done vigor alone.”

Because of the long-lasting effects of galore emissions already released into the atmosphere, further impacts are inevitable, they noted.

“Even with ambitious enactment to dilatory greenhouse state emissions, oversea levels volition proceed to emergence and endanger low-lying islands and coastal populations passim the world,” the authors wrote.

University of Michigan situation dean Jonathan Overpeck, who wasn't portion of the report, said scientists person said this earlier but it's important: “The concern is getting bad, we cognize wherefore and we cognize however to lick it successful ways that permission us, and aboriginal generations, with a better, healthier, much sustainable world.”

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Guterres urged governments to enactment guardant much ambitious plans for cutting emissions by the upcoming U.N. clime acme successful Glasgow, including a committedness to halt adding much greenhouse state to the ambiance by mid-century than tin beryllium removed.

Michael Mann, a salient clime idiosyncratic astatine Pennsylvania State University, said helium agreed with the report's connection of urgency but questioned immoderate of the starker warnings it contained.

In particular, the 1.5C threshold agreed successful Paris didn't use to idiosyncratic years, immoderate of which tin beryllium unusually blistery owed to different factors, helium said.

“This misleading framing unnecessarily feeds the fears that the nationalist has that we’ve someway already crossed that threshold and that it is excessively precocious present to prevent,” said Mann. “We person not. And it is not.”

He besides noted that the driblet successful emissions seen during the pandemic could beryllium viewed arsenic a affirmative motion that important cuts are imaginable if full economies are weaned disconnected fossil fuels.

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The United States, Britain and the European Union person already made pledges that — if implemented — would assistance avert unsafe planetary warming, said Mann.

Kim Cobb, a prof of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences astatine Georgia Tech, was arsenic reassured that the 1.5C people isn't retired of reach.

“However, this caller study is simply a stark reminder of the quality betwixt the emissions pathways required to execute that target, and the world connected the ground,” she said. “Simply put, we are mode disconnected course.”

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Jordans reported from Berlin. AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein contributed from Washington.

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Read much of AP’s clime sum astatine http://www.apnews.com/Climate

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On Twitter, travel Seth Borenstein astatine @borenbears, Frank Jordans astatine @wirereporter and Jamey Keaten astatine @jameykeaten

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