Decades of awareness, arguments and alarming sci-fi films later, the world is finally catching up on how actually bad it would be if the global temperature were to budge up by a couple of degrees. According to a new stark UN report, though, the world is running out of time and only has about 11 years until shit really starts to go down.

A new assessment published by the UN’s climate change panel yesterday had some striking words of warning to the global population, particularly when it comes to the limiting of global warming by a further 0.5°C than what had initially been mentioned back in December 2015.

Addressing a press conference in Incheon, South Korea, last Saturday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) spoke of the “clear benefits to people and natural ecosystems when limiting global warming to 1.5°C compared to 2°C,” an amount which had been marked as the absolute maximum to avoid at the now-historic December 2015 Paris Agreement.

Most worryingly, the IPCC’s report claims that this 1.5°C increase could be reached in as little as 11 years, and almost certainly within 20 years.

During that historic conference in Paris three years ago, 197 nations (over 170 states and the European Union) had adopted new targets to help curb global warming, but in a controversial move, Donald Trump pulled the USA out in June 2017, saying it was “unfair” to this country. Now, as we find ourselves already two-thirds of the way there with global temperatures having already warmed by about 1°C, this latest report warned that the new deadline for “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society” is now much closer… specifically 2030.

“We are already seeing the consequences of 1°C of global warming through more extreme weather, rising sea levels and diminishing Arctic sea ice”

– Panamao Zhai, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group 1

The bad news stemmed from the fact that climate change’s impacts are now being understood more clearly… and the results were worse than expected.

Looking at the past decade alone, a number of record-breaking storms, forest fires, heatwaves and floods have already been triggered all around the world as a result of this first 1°C increase in global temperature.

“Today, the world’s leading scientific experts collectively reinforced what mother nature has made clear – that we need to undergo an urgent and rapid transformation to a global clean energy economy,” former US Vice President Al Gore said.

At this point, in fact, the report said that even if global change and worldwide cuts in CO2 emissions were to begin immediately, it would only delay, not prevent, the impeding global warming.

There is, however, a slight sliver of hope

A direct result of the 2015 Paris Agreement, this latest report has been three whole years in the making, and points to “laws of chemistry and physics” which make a final shift (or rather, semi-permanent halt) in climate change a possibility.

Limting global warming to the newly-agreed target of 1.5°C is “possible within the laws of chemistry and physics,” co-chair of IPCC Working Group III Jim Skea said of the shift. “But doing so would require unprecedented changes”.

The IPCC’s report highlights two main ways of removing carbon from the atmosphere, the major source of climate change

While the report stressed that these methods “are at different stages of development and some are more conceptual than others, as they have not been tested at scale”, the two main points of focus were increasing natural processes that already remove carbon from the atmosphere, and experimenting with carbon storage and removal technologies.

Of course, these two methods will need a lot of global political engagement in an increasingly short time, and with certain big player administrations like Trump’s currently stalling worldwide cooperation, that 2030 deadline is looking more and more ominous.

Featured Image Sunset Inset Photo by Bennphotos

What do you make of this latest report? Let us know in the comments below

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David Grech Urpani

Lovin Malta's Head of Content, Dave has been in journalism for the better half of the last decade. Prefers Instagram, but has been known to doomscroll on TikTok. Loves chicken, women's clothes and Kanye West (most of the time).