Stop burning fossil fuels. Sell ??more electric cars. Make buildings more environmentally friendly. Save more forests. The world is already flooded with scientific advice on how to deal with the growing risks of global warming.However this week Report Unlike the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.At nearly 3,000 pages, it is the most Comprehensive analysis What can be done to avoid dangerous levels of warming since the Paris climate agreement was reached in 2015. This will help shape the climate policy debate for years to come.

Its message is both stark and compelling. The window to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is closing fast. Ideally, global emissions should peak within three years. Greener lifestyles will help, but more comprehensive structural changes will be required. The use of natural gas, oil, and especially coal must drop dramatically.

The good news is that much of the needed work is underway. Research shows that the price of green alternatives to fossil fuels has not only fallen, but plummeted. From 2010 to 2019, the cost of solar and lithium-ion batteries fell by 85%, while wind energy fell by 55%. Solar panels and wind turbines can now compete with fossil fuel power generation in many places, and the deployment of green technologies has proliferated.

Part of this increase is due to the significant expansion of climate policy and law since the last major IPCC assessment was completed in 2014. This in turn leads to avoided emissions and increased investment in low-carbon infrastructure.

At least 18 countries have reduced their emissions for more than a decade, sometimes by 4 percent a year, a pace in line with what the world needs to keep temperatures at safer levels. If all countries act to limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius or less, the authors say, global GDP will be reduced by only a few percentage points by 2050. And the calculation does not take into account the economic benefits of avoiding climate damage and reducing adaptation costs. higher temperature.

Most encouragingly, growth in greenhouse gas emissions has slowed, from an annual average of 2.1% in the early 2000s to 1.3% between 2010 and 2019. But that’s not enough. Progress in some countries has been offset by soaring emissions elsewhere. Poorer countries lack climate finance. For all the Pledge to Action, the authors say the world is on track for catastrophic 3.2C warming by the end of the century – more than double the 1.5C limit agreed in the Paris Agreement.

To have a chance of meeting the 1.5C target, emissions need to peak by 2025 at the latest and drop by an unprecedented 43% by 2030. Even so, the report says the 1.5C threshold will be “almost inevitable” to be exceeded, at least temporarily – a sobering prospect given the extreme weather that occurs at a rise of just 1.1C.

The scale of change required is enormous. By 2050, the 1.5C target calls for a 95% reduction in coal use, a 60% reduction in oil and a 45% reduction in natural gas. In times of high inflation, those goals look harder to achieve, although the war in Ukraine could accelerate a green transition as Western markets cut off Russia’s fossil fuels.

The scientific and technological solutions to climate change are now well understood. As the IPCC itself has shown, the bigger issue is politics. Its report has been debated among the 195 countries that have ratified it, some of which rely heavily on fossil fuels or lack the resources to build a green economy. After more than a century of unsustainable energy and land use, the world is turning. New ways to shift faster must now be found.