The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has released its latest 3,000-page look at how humanity can avoid compounding catastrophe if nations take sufficient action to do so. So far humanity hasn’t, the report concludes. Left unchanged, the world’s current emissions trend could result in warming of more than twice the target limit set forth in the 2015 Paris Agreement of no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.
The new report updates previous work by the IPCC — its last work on this topic came out in 2014 — as well as assessing the potential of technology and offering evidence that climate action, done right, can improve the health and wellbeing of people around the world. Here are five top takeaways.
1. 1.5 C is almost out of reach