CIEL Statement on IPCC Special Report on 1.5°C

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 8, 2018

With the release today of its long-awaited Special Report on 1.5°C, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has confirmed what abundant science has long made clear: keeping temperatures increase below 1.5c is an imperative to substantially reduce risks of irreversible impacts threatening the survival of species and ecosystems and systemic consequences for communities around the globe.

The world has already warmed by more than 1°C, bringing with it dramatic changes to ecosystems, weather patterns, extreme weather events, and communities around the world. Continued warming to 1.5°C will only exacerbate these problems, bringing even more frequent and severe extreme weather events, greater impacts on marine and terrestrial ecosystems around world, and increased impacts on human society.

The report, backed by 195 countries, includes an assessment of the current knowledge on climate change, the impacts and risks of 1.5°C of warming over pre-industrial levels, and a series of potential solutions to the global problem. This scientific assessment on climate change will be an important tool in guiding climate policymaking in the years to come.

In its report, the IPCC makes clear even 1.5°C of warming will impact the world profoundly and that allowing warming of 2°C will lead to still greater extreme weather events and even more catastrophic impacts. Carroll Muffett, President of the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), says, “As Typhoon Haiyan, Hurricane Harvey, and other climate-fueled disasters have shown, these impacts will fall disproportionately on the poor, the marginalized, and vulnerable populations— a fact reaffirmed in the IPCC’s report. Put simply, the distance between 1.5°C and 2°C of warming will be measured in human rights, human livelihoods, and human lives.”

Significantly, the IPCC also recognizes and affirms that keeping warming to no more than 1.5°C remains achievable, but the window for doing so is narrow and closing rapidly. To have even a decent chance of avoiding the most catastrophic impacts of climate change, we must cut greenhouse emissions nearly in half by 2030 and reach net zero carbon emissions by no later than 2050. Doing so demands an immediate and complete transformation of our economy away from fossil fuels and towards clean energy sources, along with the protection and restoration of natural ecosystems that serve as a defense against climate change.

“Every year of delay increases the risk that we will go far beyond the 1.5°C limit,” Muffett warns.

Critically, the IPCC also recognizes that for ecosystems and human communities alike, an overshoot and return scenario will be far more damaging than keeping warming from ever reaching 1.5°C. Accordingly, Muffett says, “Any strategy that is based on continuing business-as-usual and relying on hypothetical carbon dioxide removal strategies to bring future emissions down is unacceptably dangerous, patently inconsistent with the dictates of human rights, and more simply, immoral.”

Contact:
(Geneva) Sebastian Duyck: sduyck@ciel.org
(Washington) Carroll Muffett: cmuffett@ciel.org