The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) publishes the third of three Working Group reports in which it warns that climate change will have catastrophic consequences. The international body of scientists and representatives of countries from all over the world assesses and analyses current state and (possible) consequences of climate change and establishes recommendation for mitigation policies on sub-national, national and global level.
In this context the new assessment report, which constitutes the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report on climate change, calls attention to the faster increases of CO2 emissions worldwide in the last decade, driven inter alia by economic and population growth. IPCC expects that without additional efforts and measures emissions will continue to grow further due to population and economy activities.
IPCC’s Working Group III underlines the urgent and wide array need of mitigation policies to limit the effects of climate change and to reach the 2 degree Celsius level at end of this century. Otherwise, especially by following business-as-usual, the global mean surface temperature is projected to raise from 3,7 to 4,8 degrees Celsius till 2100, resulting in unpredicted consequences and higher costs of mitigation.
The estimations of costs in the IPCC report emphasis that only a reduction of 0.06 percent (median) of global consumption growth would be adequate to decrease global mean temperature. In doing so a substantial cut in greenhouse gases is necessary through an immediately begin of mitigation actions. Working Group III calls for more international cooperation to mitigate GHG emissions effectively and to decrease energy consumptions worldwide. It recommends that CO2 emissions have to be reduced by decoupling them from population and economy growth, more renewable energy and alternatives as key for electricity production must be supported and potential land use have to change.