According to a bleak new UN assessment, there is no credible pathway to keep global temperatures from rising.
People all over the world would be at risk if the temperature goes past 1.5C.
According to the report, governments carbon cutting plans have been woefully insufficient.
Disaster will only be avoided by an urgent transformation of society.
The next major climate conference is going to start in Egypt.
The fact that the world's attention has been elsewhere since climate diplomats met in Glasgow last year has led to a flurry of reports.
The UN Secretary General said the world needed to re-focus on climate change if it wanted to survive.
Scientists and diplomats are gloomy in the release of the UN emissions gap study.
The report looks at the gap between the rhetoric and reality.
The 1.5C threshold is now in danger.
According to the analysis, if new efforts to cut carbon are successful, emissions will fall by less than 1% by the year 2030.
According to the study, with the current policies in place, the world will warm by about 2C this century.
This can be limited to 2.4C if countries put into practice their plans.
Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP, said that time is over and that they had their chance to change.
She said that only a root-and-branch transformation of our economies and societies could save us.
It's a tall order to achieve massive cuts in emissions. Electricity, industry, transport and buildings are places where rapid transformation away from fossil fuels is possible.
Ms Anderson said that climate change must be taken with them wherever they go.
Over the dinner table, into the classrooms, into the boards of directors, into the voting booth. Climate change cannot be stopped.
As well as highlighting the slow pace of progress on tackling the causes of warming, other studies published this week show that governments aren't prepared for higher temperatures.
The government needs to get a grip on the risk to critical infrastructure posed by a warming climate according to a committee of MPs and peers.
Severe weather has overwhelmed transport and communications in the past, according to the report.
The deaths of three people from a train wreck in Scotland in August 2020, as well as the loss of electric power due to a storm in November 2021, are included.
The chair of the Joint Committee said that the lack of evidence that anyone in government is focusing on how all the impacts can come together is disturbing.
There are no ministers with focused responsibility for making sure that our infrastructure is resilient to extreme weather.
There are some positives despite the lack of progress on climate.
A transition to sustainable travel is underway according to the State of Climate Action study. Half of the buses sold in 2021 were powered by battery electric or fuel cells.
The number of electric vehicles in passenger car sales has doubled in the last year.
The International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook is also a reflection of this hope.
The energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine has the potential to speed up the transition to a more secure and sustainable energy system, according to the report.
A raft of new policies in countries like the US, Japan, Korea and the EU will likely see clean energy investments of around $2 trillion by the year 2030.
You can follow Matt on the social networking site.
Esme Stallard reports additional information.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
