1. Climate change will have a profound impact on human health by placing new pressures on the food and water security in nations around the world.
2. The world needs to act fast: if humans continue to emit greenhouse gases at current rates, the remaining carbon budget to reduce risk of exceeding the 2ºC target will be exhausted in about 20 years. Emissions should peak by 2020 and approach zero by around 2050 if the world is serious about reducing risk. As a simple rule of thumb, this means halving global emissions every decade.
3. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that by 2030, greenhouse gas emissions need to be 45 per cent below what they were in 2010 to stay under 1.5°C – which gives just over 10 years to rapidly decarbonise and avoid climate catastrophe.
4. A recent CSO Environmental Indicators Ireland report found that the Republic of Ireland has the third highest emissions of greenhouse gases per capita in the EU. This was more than double the rate in Sweden, which had the lowest rate of emissions in 2017 at 5.5 tonnes per capita.
5. Some of the world's least-developed countries (such as Ethiopia, Bangladesh, and Bhutan) are leap-frogging the old carbon-based economic model in favour of the new, low-carbon economy, similar to how they embraced mobile-phone technology over landline phones.
