'Quantum leap in climate action' needed to slow global warming

A Palestinian man rides a paddle board on a flooded street following heavy rain at the Al-Shati refugee camp in the Gaza strip on March 20, 2023. Almost half of the world’s population lives in regions highly vulnerable to climate change, where in the last decade, deaths from floods, droughts, and storms were 15 times higher.
Picture: Mohamed Abed/AFP/Getty
UN chief Antonio Guterres said staving off a 1.5C global warming rise — a tipping point that will bring extreme heatwaves and ocean rising — will take a "quantum leap in climate action”. He said: "The climate timebomb is ticking. But the IPCC report is a how-to guide to defuse the climate timebomb. It is a survival guide for humanity. As it shows, the 1.5C limit is achievable."
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- More than a century of burning fossil fuels has led to global warming of 1.1C above pre-industrial levels, resulting in more frequent and more intense extreme weather events in every region of the world.
- Every increment of warming results in rapidly escalating hazards, such as more intense heatwaves, heavier rainfall, and other weather extremes.
- Almost half of the world’s population lives in regions highly vulnerable to climate change, where in the last decade, deaths from floods, droughts, and storms were 15 times higher.