The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just released its third part of its report, “Climate Change 2021: Concrete Science Base,” following the release of its first two parts in August 2021 and February 2022. The 10,000-page report is the IPCC’s sixth comprehensive assessment of global warming since 1990, and the most serious warning sign yet.
The IPCC is an organization of hundreds of scientists from around the world who assess climate change with scientific data and warn humanity to avoid catastrophic future increases in global temperatures.

The IPCC's "Part One" report warned that the world is now "dangerously warming" beyond control, before "Part Two" suggested that a warming world could lead to the irreversible collapse of human civilization. The 2,800-page "Part Three" outlines concrete steps to make the planet "habitable" in the future, stressing the need to "act now" to avoid catastrophe.
The UN report is yet another slap in the face to world leaders and business leaders who once made straightforward promises. “Some government and business leaders are talking nonsense and are lying. The consequences are catastrophic,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said. The Earth’s surface is already 1.1 degrees Celsius warmer than mid-century or pre-industrial times, and the world is on track to limit warming to well below 2 degrees, and 1.5 degrees if possible, under the 2015 Paris Agreement. Of course, the IPCC’s “Part 3” report provides a warning sign assessment of the state of the world, as well as some actionable insights. The IPCC says that unless the world limits greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, the mid-century goal of 1.5 degrees above the limit will be unachievable.
Current national carbon-cutting policies could cut emissions only modestly by 2050, and the world is on track to reach 3.2 degrees warming above midcentury levels by 2100. Even the 2-degree target will be difficult, as the world would need to cut annual emissions by 1.5 billion tonnes every year from 2030 to 2050, or as much as it lost in 2020, the year the COVID-19 pandemic forced lockdowns and economic stalemate, every year.
The IPCC also recommends a path to achieving the goal, which is to replace fossil fuels with alternative energy sources. The IPCC states that if the infrastructure for producing oil, gas and coal does not capture greenhouse gases that are released into the atmosphere, it will be impossible to keep global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. It also states that to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above the mid-19th century level, the world must use 30 percent of its oil reserves, 50 percent of its gas reserves and 80 percent of its coal reserves, even with carbon capture technology. It also states that ending government subsidies for fossil fuels worldwide could cut emissions by as much as 10 percent by 2030.
IPCC also outlines another approach: a “clean energy transition.” It says the world needs to transition to “net zero” greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, using electricity and other zero-emission sources to keep the Paris Agreement targets alive. Although the world has already switched to cleaner energy sources, such as a 70 percent increase in wind power and a 170 percent increase in solar power between 2015 and 2019, these two sources accounted for only 8 percent of total electricity generation in 2019. Electricity generated from zero-emission or low-carbon technologies, such as hydropower or nuclear, accounted for only 37 percent, while the rest came from fossil fuels that produce greenhouse gases. IPCC also says there are ways to reduce energy demand from consumers, such as eating a plant-based diet, using electric vehicles, going carless, telecommuting, building climate-resilient buildings, reducing long-haul flights, and increasing energy efficiency, which will all help reduce carbon emissions by 40 to 70 percent by 2050. It also includes a more feasible but realistic approach: sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Whether it is reforestation or the use of chemical tools to separate carbon dioxide from the air, which are required to reach the “Net Zero” goal and “reduce global temperatures”, of course, reaching the goal through these various methods will require a high budget. The IPCC stated that to stop the global temperature from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius as targeted, it is necessary to invest up to 2.3 trillion US dollars or about 76 trillion baht per year in the electricity industry between 2023 and 2052. However, if the target is 2 degrees Celsius, the budget will be reduced to 1.7 trillion US dollars or 56.9 trillion baht per year. Compared to the budget that the world invested in clean energy in 2021, which was 750 billion US dollars, it is still very far from the goal. That is just an example of a concrete approach that the IPCC is telling the world to know in order to avoid the disaster that will occur. And of course, the IPCC has warned about such disasters in the previous 2 parts of the report, such as the Arctic Ocean ice melting completely at least once in the summer. Coastal flooding rates will double; extreme heat waves that normally occur every 50 years will occur every 10 years; tropical cyclones will become more intense; more rain and snow will fall in a single day; droughts will become 1.7 times more frequent; and wildfire seasons will become longer and more severe than ever before. Of course, the IPCC's recommendations are not only not easy to implement, they will also require the cooperation of all countries around the world. Here's hoping that this report can galvanize the world to do its part to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as much as possible.