'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 

Choices made on reducing emissions this decade “will reverberate for thousands of years”, as the UN described a new report on climate change as a “survival guide for humanity”.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a UN-backed body of global climate scientists, including Maynooth University professor Peter Thorne, said there are multiple options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but progress has been marred by the sluggish pace of action in the past five years.