- Late surge lifts Thailand's Jeeno to LPGA Queen City lead
- DeChambeau says PGA's Ryder Cup decision 'just the start'
- Alcaraz defeated on Laver Cup debut
- Postecoglou embraces 'struggle' to make Spurs a success
- Nice hand 'ashamed' Saint-Etienne 8-0 Ligue 1 mauling
- Boeing CEO says ending strike 'a top priority'
- Stock markets mostly fall after Fed-fueled rally
- Harris slams Trump for hypocrisy on abortion as US starts voting
- Academy to host first overseas ceremony to honor young filmmakers
- No doctor necessary: US okays nasal spray flu vaccine for self-use
- Gurbaz, birthday boy Rashid lead Afghanistan to 177-run rout of South Africa
- Former delivery man Baldwin leads star names at PGA Championship
- Trump shooting: Secret Service admits complacency
- Can an ambitious Milei make Argentina an AI giant?
- Haiti, its suffering growing, in 'race against time': UN expert
- Ibrahim Aqil, the Hezbollah elite unit commander wanted by the US
- Chinese forward Cui signs NBA contract with Brooklyn Nets
- US Fed dissenter calls for 'measured' pace of rate cuts
- Guardiola tells players to lead change over workload as Kompany demands cap on games
- Norway limits wild salmon fishing as stocks hit new lows
- Top Hezbollah commander killed in Israeli strike on Beirut
- Rotterdam fatal knife attacker suspected of 'terrorist motive'
- First early votes cast in knife-edge US presidential election
- Top-ranked Swiatek out of Beijing due to 'personal matters'
- Hard-right Reform UK looks to the future after vote success
- Embiid agrees to NBA contract extension with 76ers
- Joshua aims to complete road to redemption in Dubois bout
- World champion Bagnaia sets pace with lap record at Misano
- Biden says 'working' to get people back to homes on Israel-Lebanon border
- Pope criticises Argentina's crackdown on protesters
- Court limits screenings of videos in France mass rape case
- Gurbaz century takes Afghanistan to 311-4 in 2nd ODI
- Central banks face 'difficult balancing act': IMF chief
- McLaren's Norris sets Singapore pace as struggling Verstappen 15th
- Guardiola tells players to lead change over workload fears
- Paris Olympics sports equipment moves to new homes
- 'Happy' Kinghorn relishing life at Toulouse
- Norris sets Singapore pace as Verstappen only 15th
- 8 dead in Israeli strike, source says Hezbollah commander killed
- Germany to bid to host women's Euro 2029
- Portugal brings deadly forest fires under control
- Postecoglou defends Solanke after slow start to Spurs career
- US nuclear plant Three Mile Island to reopen to power Microsoft
- Arteta urges Arsenal to take next step in Man City showdown
- Stock markets fall after Fed-fuelled rally
- Top Hezbollah commander 'killed' in Israel strike
- Poland charges Russian over attack on Navalny ally: prosecutors
- Man City have rest 'advantage' in Arsenal showdown: Guardiola
- Maresca has 'no doubt' in Jackson as Chelsea's number nine
- EU chief announces 35 bn euro loan plan for Ukraine before winter
Nations vet climate solutions as world 'sleepwalks' to catastrophe
Nearly 200 nations gathered Monday to grapple with a question that will outlive Covid-19 and Russia's invasion of Ukraine: how does a world addicted to fossil fuels prevent carbon pollution from making Earth unliveable?
A partial answer is set for April 4, in the form of a 3,000-page report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) due to be approved after two weeks of closed-door, virtual meetings that began Monday.
The assessment will detail options for drawing down greenhouse gases and extracting them from the air, in an urgent effort to stop devastating warming.
"The problem is getting worse," UN chief Antonio Guterres told a separate sustainability conference in London on Monday, adding that major economies are allowing carbon pollution to increase when drastic cuts are needed.
"We are sleepwalking to climate catastrophe."
Climate impacts "are costly and mounting, but we still have some time to close the window and get ahead of the worst of them if we act now," said Alden Meyer, a senior analyst at climate and energy think-tank E3G.
He said the upcoming IPCC report, the last in a three-part assessment of climate change, "will supply the answers as to what we need if we're serious about getting there."
In August 2021, the IPCC laid out the physical science and projected that Earth's surface temperature will rise 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, perhaps within a decade.
A 1.5C cap on global warming -- the aspirational goal of the 2015 Paris climate accord -- has been embraced as a target by most of the world's nations.
Barely 1.1C of warming so far has ushered in a crescendo of deadly extreme weather across the globe.
Recently renewed national carbon-cutting commitments, however, still put us on a catastrophic path toward 2.7C of warming by 2100.
- 'Transformation' -
Part two of the IPCC report -- described by Guterres as an "atlas of human suffering" -- detailed past and future climate impacts and the limits of our ability to adapt.
Delaying climate action would severely reduce the chances of a "liveable future," it concluded.
Part three is about how to keep planet-warming gases out of the atmosphere, with chapters on the key sectors where rapid and deep change is needed: energy, transport, industry, agriculture, among others.
"We are talking about the large-scale transformation of all the major systems," climate economist and co-author Celine Guivarch told AFP.
The main focus is on weaning the global economy off fossil fuels and moving to low- or zero-carbon sources of energy, from solar and wind to nuclear, hydro and hydrogen.
Helping that transition is the fact that renewable energy is now cheaper than energy generated by fossil fuels in many markets.
The IPCC also details ways to reduce demand for oil, gas and coal, whether by making buildings more energy efficient or encouraging shifts in lifestyle, such as eating less beef and not flying half-way around the world for a holiday or business meeting.
But humanity has waited so long to take action that switching supply and reducing demand are not enough: we also need to pull CO2 out of the air.
In theory -- because the technology does not yet exist at scale -- carbon dioxide removal will compensate for hard-to-decarbonise sectors such as aviation and shipping, and extract excess CO2 if temperatures "overshoot" the Paris Agreement targets.
- Likely to fail? -
"Delivering on the climate commitments that we've made internationally and nationally is far more challenging than we have been prepared to accept," said Kevin Anderson, a professor of energy and climate change at the University of Manchester.
"Right now, we are very likely to fail. But if we don't try, we are guaranteed to fail," he told AFP.
The IPCC "solutions" report draws from hundreds of models projecting development pathways that keep Earth within the bounds of the Paris temperature goals.
"There are scenarios that show high renewables and low nuclear, and scenarios that show the opposite," said Taryn Fransen, an analyst at the World Resources Institute in Washington DC.
"This report lays out those pathways. Now it's up to our leaders to take that to heart."
Besides feeding into UN political negotiations, which resume in November in Egypt at COP 27, the IPCC findings will also be important "for the conversation going on in the US and Europe around the need to transition away from Russian oil and gas," said Meyer.
The head of the IPCC delegation from Ukraine made this point in a dramatic statement at a closed plenary in February, only days after Russian troops invaded her country.
"Human-induced climate change and the war on Ukraine have the same roots -- fossil fuels -- and our dependence on them," said Svitlana Krakovska, according to multiple sources.
J.Fankhauser--BTB