IPCC SYNTHESIS REPORT, SCIENCE’S LAST GREAT WARNING
NOT EXCEEDING +1.5°C IS POSSIBLE, BUT WE MUST ACT NOW. OR THE FUTURE WILL BE UNBEARABLE
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has today released its Sixth Assessment Report.
The document is the last major report produced by the IPCC and displays the current state of the climate crisis and scenarios for both the long term and the near future, between 2030 and 2040.
The Synthesis Report (SYR) is a summary of all the reports of the IPCC’s 6th Assessment Cycle published between 2018 and 2023. It incorporates the latest information from the three Assessment Reports – The Physical Science Basis (Working Group 1), Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability (Working Group 2), and Mitigation of Climate Change (Working Group 3) – as well as the findings of the three Special Reports – Global Warming of 1.5°C, Climate Change and Land, and The Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate.
Below is the comment of the Italian Climate Network, with the statements of Serena Giacomin, President, and Jacopo Bencini, Policy Advisor, in order.
“The umpteenth confirmation of a critical situation and unheeded Science – says Serena Giacomin, President of the Italian Climate Network – The IPCC Assessment Reports are the most in-depth and accredited scientific review on climate change available to humanity. This report number 6 is based on a wealth of data and evidence of enormous strategic value. We must learn to use this data to analyse the present and choose our future. We must move beyond mere awareness of the climate problem – necessary but not sufficient – and apply the data with strategies for action. The science is clear, the time to act with adaptation and mitigation is short, but the cognitive and technological tools are there. All we need is the will to do so. As the Italian Climate Network, we appeal to the world of communication to join the scientific world and help it overcome the barriers of doubt and delayed action. Collaboration and constructive sense are at the basis of a sustainable development process, the transition we need is not only ecological, but also cultural. Science has no doubts, things cannot go on like this, and the longer we wait, the harder the effects of the climate crisis will be to bear”.
“The world’s governments have asked the IPCC to answer an existential question: ‘How bad is the problem? How much time do we have?” – adds Jacopo Bencini, Policy Advisor Italian Climate Network – The scientists’ answer is clear and requires a pragmatic response: to remain in a habitable world, or in political terms, ‘manageable’ according to known patterns, while being able to guarantee similar or no worse living conditions for citizens and nature, it is necessary to eliminate CO2 from our production and living systems. In the face of the displacements, the disasters already underway, it is still incredibly possible to limit the effects of the disaster caused by the fossil economy within a warming of +1.5°C, but to do so we must immediately question everything about our economies, with strong public policies to accompany the transition so as not to create further inequalities. Courage is needed. In a decade, the cost of photovoltaics has fallen by 85%, wind by 55% and lithium batteries by 85%. The technology is there, the money is there, the numbers speak for themselves: all that is needed now is the political will. To deny the evidence now would be politically anti-historical; to point it out is, in a sense, a public service. Also, from an Italian point of view, for the necessary and inescapable upward revision of our national plan, the PNIEC”.
The work of the IPCC shows once again the consensus of the scientific community on the urgency of the climate crisis and its causes. It is “unequivocal” that the climate is changing as a result of human activity, the experts said. The report describes an already critical situation in which global warming is having a devastating impact, particularly on the most vulnerable regions and communities, and warns of the irreversible damage that will occur if temperatures rise, even temporarily, above the 1.5°C threshold compared to pre-industrial levels.