The United Nations has warned that countries around the world must ramp up efforts to comply with the green agenda in an effort to stop an alleged “climate time bomb.”
According to the UN, Net Zero targets must be brought forward by a decade.
The UN issued the warning at the launch of a major new climate change report, The Telegraph reported.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims that rising emissions in recent years mean cuts in the next two decades will have to be more extreme than current plans.
An 80% global reduction in CO2 emissions is needed to limit warming to 1.5°C, the upper aim of the Paris Agreement, its new report says.
But the UN said richer countries must move faster than developing nations.
Western nations need to be “super-charging” their Net Zero goals and helping poorer countries cut their own emissions to align with green agenda goals.
The United Kingdom, like most other developed nations, has set a target for Net Zero emissions by 2050, according to the report.
Government climate change advisers have said getting there quicker will “stretch feasibility.”
Speaking at the launch of the report on Monday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said “humanity is on thin ice – and that ice is melting fast”.
“The climate time bomb is ticking,” he warned.
He added that the 1.5°C limit was “achievable” but would require a “quantum leap in climate action.”
Developed countries should “commit to reaching Net Zero as close as possible to 2040” while emerging countries, including China and India, should aim for 2050.
The U.K.’s climate change committee, which advises the Government on its Net Zero goal, has modeled a way to reach the target by 2042.
It includes a 50% reduction in meat and dairy consumption, a 15% cut in air passenger levels compared with pre-pandemic levels, and the widespread acceptance of heat pumps in homes.
The committee said it was a “highly optimistic scenario, stretching feasibility in a wide range of areas.”
Chris Jones, from the Met Office Hadley Centre, and a co-author of the report said the scale of the global challenge was “massive.”
“In 2020, during the Covid lockdowns, CO2 emissions dropped by about 6%,” he said.
“So we need to achieve that year-on-year for the rest of this decade, and obviously we can’t do that by locking people down.”
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