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By Laurie Goering [[link removed]] | Climate Change Editor

Last call for 1.5C

Climate scientists for years have urged governments and businesses to slash climate-changing emissions, with limited success.

On Monday, they changed tack and appealed directly to everyone on the planet [[link removed]] to seize a dwindling chance to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or risk fundamental harm to both people living today and their descendants for thousands of years.

With easy-to-grasp graphics showing the scale of coming heatwave risks [[link removed]] likely to affect everyone from babies to retired people within their lifetimes, the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) [[link removed]] warned "there is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all".

It showed "high" or "very high" confidence by scientists about the scale of coming risks and emphasized that shifting to clean energy made sense - for health and well-being reasons - even for those relatively unconcerned about climate change.

For too long, “we at all levels - governments, communities, individuals - have made climate change somebody else's problem" - a reality that needs to change, said Peter Thorne, one of the authors of the new summary report of climate science and a geography professor at Ireland's Maynooth University.

April O’Leary checks on flood damage in Conway, South Carolina, USA almost two weeks after Hurricane Florence hit, on Sept. 26, 2018. Thomson Reuters Foundation/Julie Dermansky

Water warning

Water risks [[link removed]] also need more attention, scientists said this week as a major U.N. water summit gets underway in New York.

Human activities - from destroying forests to burning gas, oil and coal for energy - are disrupting the rainfall the world depends [[link removed]] on, fuelling huge economic, health and social stability threats, they warned.

"We've built our economies on the assumption we can rely on precipitation," said Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and co-chair of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water [[link removed]].

But "what we're finding is climate change and land use change is shifting that very significantly," he said.

Deforestation, for instance, is shifting the flows of water vapour that rise from forests like the Amazon, causing worsening drought in distant places that depend on those flows.

Protecting water security in the future will require taking a much wider look at what has often been thought of as a local or regional problem, scientists said.

"Behind food production, behind energy [[link removed]], behind all the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals), there is a volume of freshwater that powers the delivery of that service," Rockström said. "Right now we just take it for granted".

A man walks with bottles to collect water from the public water supply as more than half of Mexico faces moderate to severe drought conditions, in Monterrey, Mexico June 16, 2022. REUTERS/Daniel Becerril

Ending oil?

But changing what needs to be changed - swiftly - is rarely easy.

A bold plan by Colombia's president to phase out the country's reliance on oil and coal revenue [[link removed]] as part of its clean energy transition will likely take decades, economists warned, particularly amid uncertainty over whether efforts to scale up alternatives - such as boosting tourism and agriculture - can work.

For now, the government has not yet put a ban on new oil exploration contracts into writing, or into its four-year development plan, unveiled in February.

"The decision to replace fossil fuel exports is a responsible one .... no one said it would be easy," said Giovanni Pabón, energy director at Transforma, a think-tank on climate action.

But researchers at the World Resources Institute have some ideas [[link removed]] about how Colombia and other emerging economies could get started now on a shift away from oil and gas, while helping the workers and communities who might lose out.

See you next week,

Laurie

This week's top picks China's Mekong dams turn Thai fishing villages into 'ghost towns' [[link removed]]

China's dam-building on the Mekong River is altering water flows and holding back sediment, affecting millions living downstream

Shining example? Solar power boosts struggling Tunisian school [[link removed]]

A solar-powered school in northern Tunisia shows how the country's lagging schools might be turned around - and renewables boosted

Can Colombia's green energy plan succeed without fossil fuel cash? [[link removed]]

Colombia has stopped issuing new oil exploration contracts - but will it last in an economy heavily dependent on fossil fuels?

'Act now': IPCC climate report appeals to all to salvage 1.5C goal [[link removed]]

IPCC climate science report seek to enlist all people in last-ditch push to keep temperatures from exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius

IPCC climate report: Slash emissions by 2030 for liveable future [[link removed]]

Latest IPCC climate report calls urgently to cut emissions this decade to stay below 1.5 degrees and avoid more extreme weather

It’s time for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty [[link removed]]

My nation of Vanuatu was just struck by two cyclones in 48 hours. Now is the time to cut climate risks

Why water emergencies are the thorniest end of the climate crisis [[link removed]]

Future water security depends on transforming how water systems are managed

Read all of our coverage here [[link removed]] Editor's pick Water security and climate change [[link removed]]

As a first-in-nearly-five-decades UN Water Conference on 22-24 March aims to search out solutions to a growing water crisis, here is a curated collection of our stories on water security.

[[link removed]]Discover more Nature [[link removed]] Climate Risks [[link removed]] Net Zero [[link removed]] Just Transition [[link removed]] Climate Justice [[link removed]] Green Cities [[link removed]] Thank you for reading!

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