Reactions to landmark UN climate report

Without rapid large-scale reductions in emissions, the report says, the average global temperature will exceed critical thresholds of 1.5 and 2.0 degrees Celsius during the 21st century.

Here are some early reactions to the IPCC report.

UN/GOVERNMENT

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres:

"Today's IPCC Working Group 1 Report is a 'code red' for humanity. The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable: greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and deforestation are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk. ...This report must sound a death knell for coal and fossil fuels, before they destroy our planet."

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson:

"I hope today's IPCC report will be a wake-up call for the world to take action now, before we meet in Glasgow in November for the critical COP26 summit."

US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, John Kerry:

"All major economies must commit to aggressive climate action during this critical decade."

Mohamed Nasheed, ambassador for the Climate Vulnerable Forum of 48 countries, and former Maldives president:

"Our people are dying in vulnerable developing countries because of the fossil fuel burning for consumption and economic growth in rich countries. We are paying with our lives for the carbon someone else emitted. We will take measures soon to begin to address this injustice, which we cannot merely accept."

SCIENTISTS

Paulo Artaxo, an IPCC lead author and environmental physicist at the University of Sao Paulo:

"This is a strong message that we are changing the climate in an irreversible way....My personal opinion is that it will be impossible to limit the increase in temperature to 1.5 degrees."

Helene Hewitt, a coordinating IPCC lead author and Ocean Modelling group leader at the UK Met Office's Hadley Centre:

"Previous reports may have slightly underestimated the trend of Arctic sea ice (melting) in the past and now we are combining multiple lines of evidence which suggest that we might see a practically sea-ice-free Arctic for the first time by 2050 under all scenarios."

Kristina Dahl, a senior climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists:

"While this report underscores the urgent need for climate action, prior IPCC reports and countless other studies, as well as our lived experience, have already given us more than enough evidence to know that we're in the midst of a crisis brought to us largely by the fossil fuel industry and their political allies."

CAMPAIGN GROUPS

Helen Mountford, Vice President of Climate and Economics, World Resources Institute:

"If this IPCC report doesn't shock you into action, it should. The report paints a very sobering picture of the unforgiving, unimaginable world we have in store if our addiction to burning fossil fuels and destroying forests continues."

Kaisa Kosonen, Senior Political Adviser on Climate and Energy, Greenpeace:

"We're not going to let this report be shelved by further inaction. Instead, we'll be taking it with us to the courts. By strengthening the scientific evidence between human emissions and extreme weather, the IPCC has provided new, powerful means for everyone everywhere to hold the fossil fuel industry and governments directly responsible for the climate emergency."

Nafkote Dabi, Climate Policy Lead at Oxfam:

"Amid a world in parts burning, in parts drowning and in parts starving, the IPCC today tables the most compelling wake-up call yet for global industry to switch from oil, gas and coal to renewables. Governments must use law to compel this urgent change. Citizens must use their own political power and behaviours to push big polluting corporations and governments in the right direction. There is no Plan B."

Australian Associated Press