With greenhouse gas emissions continuing to climb, the window to achieving international climate change goals is closing quickly, say the authors of a new United Nations climate report. The critical efforts needed to mitigate future impacts are still doable, though, the report notes—and the construction industry has a role to play.
The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, released April 4, includes some dramatic warnings. For example, it notes that GHG emissions will need to peak by 2025 at the latest, and be reduced by 43% by 2030, to reach the target of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C (2.7°F) from pre-industrial levels, a goal set by the 2015 Paris Agreement that scientists consider a threshold beyond which climate-related hazards will worsen.