Members of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have presented the final part of the assessment of the climate crisis, focalizing on how to mitigate its effects.
The report states that there must be "rapid, deep and immediate" cuts in carbon dioxide emissions.
After a controversial approval session in which scientists and government officials dissected the report line by line, the (IPCC) has now published its guidance on what the world can do to avoid a dangerous future.
First off, even if all the policies to cut carbon by the end of 2020 have been fully implemented, the world will still warm by 3.2C this century.
That type of temperature rise would have our planet hit by "unprecedented heatwaves, terrifying storms, as well as widespread water shortages."
In order to avoid this, the world has to keep the rise in temperatures at or under 1.5C this century. Researchers say that the latest IPCC summary shows that it can be done in what is called a "viable and financially sound manner."
But keeping temperatures down will require intense changes to energy production, industry, transport, our consumption patterns, and the way we treat our environment.
According to the IPCC, to stay under 1.5C means that carbon emissions have to peak, from everything that we do, buy, use or eat by 2025 and tumble rapidly after that in order to reach net zero by the middle of this century.
Basically, the amount of CO2 that the world has emitted in the last decade is the same amount that's left to us to stay under this key temperature threshold.
"I think the report tells us that we've reached the now-or-never point of limiting warming to 1.5C," said IPCC lead author Heleen De Coninck, Professor of Innovation and Climate Change at Eindhoven University of Technology.
