March 20, 2023
Geneva and Interlaken (CH) – The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — the UN body responsible for climate science — released its latest Synthesis Report, including a Summary for Policymakers, summarizing key findings from six major IPCC reports published since 2014.
In this latest report, the IPCC once again unequivocally warns that exceeding 1.5°C warming (“overshoot”) has dangerous and irreversible consequences and confirms that every fraction of a degree matters to avoid climate “tipping points” and self-reinforcing feedback loops, such as permafrost thawing and the collapse of forest ecosystems.
The report makes it clear that in order to keep global warming below 1.5°C, rapid and deep emission reductions are needed across all sectors, starting with an immediate phase-out of coal, oil, and gas.
Lili Fuhr, Deputy Director of CIEL’s Climate and Energy Program
“The takeaway of the IPCC synthesis is irrefutable: an immediate, rapid, and equitable fossil fuel phase-out is the cornerstone of any strategy to avoid catastrophic levels of global warming. Yet, the negotiations this past week highlighted the clash between the latest climate science and the mainstream economic models that perpetuate a business-as-usual approach. The IPCC reports show that we can prevent irreversible harm to people and the planet if we scale up proven solutions available now. Replacing fossil fuels with renewables, increasing energy efficiency, and reducing energy and resource use are the surest path to limiting global warming to 1.5°C. Building our mitigation strategies on models that instead lock in inequitable growth and conveniently assume away the risks of technofixes like carbon capture and storage and carbon dioxide removal ignores that clarion message and increases the likelihood of overshoot. The most ambitious mitigation pathways put out by the IPCC set the floor, not the ceiling, for necessary climate action. Solving the climate crisis is not about what works on paper but what delivers in practice. There is no time to waste with false solutions.”
Francesca Mingrone, CIEL Staff Attorney
“The IPCC Synthesis Report’s Summary for Policymakers unequivocally recognizes the centrality of human rights-based approaches to climate action. Centering mitigation and adaptation measures on human rights and effective participation is essential to tackling the root causes of climate change, avoiding harm to people and ecosystems, and dismantling structural inequalities and discrimination. Equity, social justice, climate justice, and human rights must be at the core of the updated Nationally Determined Contributions that Parties will submit under the Paris Agreement in 2025. The IPCC Summary for Policymakers will inform the Global Stocktake on Paris implementation, strengthening the imperative of just, rights-based climate action that leaves no one behind and contributes to a thriving and sustainable future for communities and Peoples across the world.”
Nikki Reisch, Director of CIEL’s Climate and Energy Program
“While government delegates at the IPCC in Switzerland discussed the latest climate science, many of their counterparts back in capitals continued to blatantly ignore it. The Biden Administration’s approval last week of new oil drilling in Alaska is an egregious example of this dangerous disconnect. The science leaves no doubt: we cannot fight climate change without halting all new oil, gas, and coal projects and shuttering existing fossil fuel facilities. The IPCC’s AR6 report puts governments and corporations on notice yet again: every day and every dollar they spend propping up and locking in the fossil economy contributes to mounting death and damage, and increases the chances of overshooting 1.5°C. The failure to align their policies and practices with what the science shows is required to avoid catastrophic harm to people and the planet is a colossal dereliction of duty and a mounting liability risk.”
Some governments are showing true climate leadership: While 135 governments attended the IPCC meeting in Interlaken, Switzerland, the governments of Vanuatu, Tuvalu, Tonga, Fiji, Niue, and the Solomon Islands, committed to creating a “Fossil Fuel Free Pacific”. The announcement was made in Vanuatu at the 2nd Pacific Ministerial Dialogue on Pathways for the Global Just Transition. The six Pacific island nations issued a joint call for the world to back a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty, and pledged to build a global alliance to phase out coal, oil, and gas. Small island states are among the most vulnerable nations to climate change impacts and have contributed the least to the climate crisis.
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Press contact: Niccolo Sarno | press@ciel.org
Notes for the editors:
Lost in Translation: Lessons from the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment on the Urgent Transition from Fossil Fuels and the Risks of Misplaced Reliance on False Solutions (March 2023)
This joint analysis produced by the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) and the Heinrich Böll Foundation, is intended as a metric and counterpoint to weigh the IPCC’s AR6 SYR SPM against the underlying AR6 reports to highlight findings that are essential to understanding the climate actions necessary to prevent and minimize the risk of catastrophic impacts of overshoot, and to design the just and equitable path ahead.’