Reacción a "Reactions to the IPCC synthesis report urging more ambitious action to combat climate change"

Covid-19 has altered our lives in recent years, and so have the deadlines for the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (better known as the IPCC). However, the Synthesis Report of the sixth assessment round of this body since its founding in 1988 not only lives up to its predecessors but presents us in a succinct, well-ordered and structured way that is easy to follow and understand, the comprehensiveness and interconnectedness of the main aspects that were contained independently in the three main reports of each of the working groups (WGs) (The Physical Bases of Climate [WG I], Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability [WG II], and Mitigation of Climate Change [WG III]). In addition, three special reports have been produced during this sixth assessment round: "Global Warming of 1.5 °C", conducted at the request of the Framework Convention on Climate Change following the Paris Agreement in 2015, which laid the groundwork for reorienting the objectives of that agreement to contemplate 1.5 °C, not just 2 °C, as a warming target; "Climate Change and the Earth", which studied the interactions between terrestrial ecosystems and climate; "Oceans and the Cryosphere in a Changing Climate", which analyses the interactions between these component of the Earth System on climate.  

The Synthesis Report aims to synthesise in a comprehensive and coherent way what is contained in each of the above-mentioned reports. In doing so, it has made the following clear: 

1. the observed warming is unequivocal, with increasingly overwhelming evidence of it;  
2. the impact of this warming on ecosystems and human systems is also unequivocal;  
3. unprecedented action is needed to reduce emissions to levels consistent with not exceeding 1.5°C or 2°C warming. 

These levels of warming were agreed at the Paris Conference in 2015. After analysing past trends and possible future changes, the report spends much of its time exploring possible ways to halt warming as agreed, detailing the mitigation options that exist in different industrial or natural sectors. It details how each increase in warming escalates the consequent hazards and impacts, hence the urgent need to act on mitigation, highlighting the benefits of doing so against the costs of inaction. The solution lies in climate-resilient development, which requires measures to adapt to the new climate, while reducing emissions and reaping the benefits of doing so. However, there are limits to adaptation, hence the urgency of halting warming at manageable levels. Natural ecosystems and society are interconnected; we need the former for future prosperity, hence the need to conserve 30-50% of them in order to ensure the health of the planet and enable sustainable development. On the other hand, climate justice is needed to guide action, as those who have done the least to create the problem are the ones who are most negatively affected by this overheating climate, which is not going to stop in the foreseeable future. 

This report marks the end of the IPCC's sixth assessment cycle, and it is now up to governments to take note of its diagnosis of the situation and the options, not prescriptions, it contains to address the need to halt the use of fossil fuels, the main cause of global warming. Its conclusions have been endorsed by all member countries, which are the majority of countries represented at the UN. Never has science been so clear and robust in pointing out a problem, its origins and possibilities to reduce or minimise it. It is now up to all of us to act, first and foremost governments, who have the tools at their disposal to reverse a problem created by a way of conceiving the planet as infinite. But the Earth is finite and we must match what we do with its capacity to tolerate it and not alter it in such a way that development turns against us.