The latest report from climate scientists is a “final warning” about the shift in the global environment – and people are once again calling on governments to do something, anything.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the final part of six assessments into the state of the world’s climate on Monday, after hundreds of specialists spent eight years bringing it all together.
The IPCC – which has been releasing warnings about the climate for 30 years – noted yet again that rising greenhouse gas emissions were about to pull the world past of the point of no return, with extreme weather leading to worldwide deaths just on the horizon.
But, the scientists noted there was a chance of stopping the climate from increasing beyond the 1.5C in temperature compared to the pre-industrial age. Past this point, the damage to the environment would be irreversible.
Stopping the climate crisis in its tracks needs urgent action though – and more than three billion people are already highly vulnerable to the climate breakdown particularly in the global south.
This new report is essentially a guide for governments to implement change ahead of the next IPCC report arriving in 2030, although it seemed to criticise political reluctance in its assessment of the state of our climate right now.
The United Nations general secretary Antonio Guterres called on governments around the world to act, reduce emissions by investing in renewable technology.
This report from the IPCC, which advises the UN on rising temperatures, was agreed on by all governments involved.
But, Guterres still pleaded for wealthy nations to reach net zero “as close as possible to 2040” instead of waiting for 2050, as previously stated under the 2015 Paris Agreement.
Meanwhile, the US has just approved the opening of a new decades-long oil drilling site in Alaska, and the UK gave a new coal mine in Cumbria (expected to release 17,500 tonnes of methane annually) the go ahead.
So, yeah – Twitter is naturally looking to world leaders to actually step up.
The irony that it was an Intergovernmental Panel calling for governments to switch national policies was not lost on some users.
Others called for greater media interventions to put pressure on the government, too.
BBC News’ Annita McVeigh also revealed that she was told by Climate Action Network International: “If climate change were a bank it would have been bailed out by now.”
And the ongoing international focus on fossil fuels was torn apart, too.
Opposition MPs – including Green Party’s Caroline Lucas, Labour’s London Mayor Sadiq Khan and shadow climate change secretary Ed Miliband – took the chance to call for Downing Street to actually step up.
Of course, it’s not solely down to government policy, as several reporters and other Twitter users noted.
And many noted that the scientists did not think it was a lost cause – simply that we need to do much, much more to have a substantial impact.