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Window is narrowing’: scientists urge action at UN climate talks, Guardian, Jonathan Watts in Katowice, Wed 12 Dec 2018

Gilet jaunes protests cast shadow as concerns raised over backlash against rapid change Scientists have laid down the gauntlet for political leaders as the UN climate summit in Katowice, Poland, wrestles with the challenge of cutting emissions without sparking social tensions like those seen recently in France.The UN climate talks – known as COP24 and the most important since the Paris agreement was signed in 2015 – aim to set a new rulebook for governments to reduce greenhouse gases and to raise ambitions, after warnings of dire consequences if global warming rises more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

The climate crisis is already here and the risks are growing, said Hoesung Lee, chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, who led a study by thousands of scientists on ways to avoid 1.5C of warming via accelerated transition from fossil fuels.

“The IPCC made a tremendous collective effort to bring you the best scientific knowledge on the subject. We tell you limiting warming to 1.5C is possible but the window is narrowing,” Lee told a plenary on Tuesday. “The scientific community has delivered, now it is up to governments to take action.”

There has been fierce debate about what to do with the study. All but four of the world’s governments want to formally welcome the 1.5C report to spur a more ambitious shift towards renewable energy. However, four oil producing nations – the US, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait – said the study should merely be “noted”.

This issue has overshadowed the past few days of the talks in Poland. Saudi Arabia has claimed there are “gaps and uncertainties” in the study. The US held a long-planned event promoting coal, gas, oil and nuclear power.

In a thinly veiled criticism of such tactics, Laurent Fabius, a former prime minister of France and president of the 2015 Paris climate talks, told the plenary that political leaders would play a negative role if they were “not only somnambulists but spoilers”.

He noted that global emissions rose by 2% this year, when they need to decline if warming is to be kept to a less dangerous level.

“Let us be clear, the real world is not on track. We need to do more and to do it faster,” Fabius said. “The IPCC 1.5C report shows the tremendous importance of every half degree and the disastrous consequences of missing that boundary.”……..https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/11/the-window-is-narrowing-scientists-urge-action-at-un-climate-talks