This week the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, released the third and final part of its sixth assessment report.

Parts one and two clearly established the links between human activity and climate change, as well as assessed the destruction that would be caused in different scenarios. This third part, though, is the biggie.

It’s what we can do to fix it. The report itself is huge, but the message is clear: fossil fuel usage must peak before 2025, and be halved by 2030 to give us a shot at limiting warming to 1.5 Celsius above pre-industrial levels. That’s about thirty months to secure a stable future for the humans on this planet.

And that sounds terrifying, I know. But this report didn’t just give us a timer; it gave us a road map. So let’s get into the details. 278 authors from 65 countries drafted this report on recent trends in greenhouse gas emissions, as well as technology and government policies worldwide, to assess whether it’s enough to meet our global goal to limit warming to 1.5 degrees.

After analysis, the authors found that current country policies fell short of CO2 reductions needed to limit to 1.5 degrees by 14 to 23 gigatons, which is just under half the amount of CO2 we produced in 2019. That gap is one of the reasons that for the first time in its 34 year history, this IPCC report stipulated that we can’t afford to build any new fossil fuel infrastructure. No new gas pipelines, no new oil drilling or refineries, no new coal mines or power plants.

In fact, the team of experts went even further, and stated that even some existing fossil fuel infrastructure will have to be shut down to hit the 1.5 degrees target. And if we manage to reach net zero - where any carbon we emit is balanced with processes absorbing it from the atmosphere, global temperature will stabilize. But to have a shot at 1.5 degrees, that needs to be achieved by 2050.

With almost 80 percent of the world’s energy consumption still relying on fossil fuels, making the change is going to take political pressure and a lot of innovation and determination. The good news is that, according to this final part of the report, we’ve already developed nearly all of the technologies needed to move away from fossil fuels. That could be through using alternative fuel sources, such as green hydrogen or renewables.

Or through less technological methods, such as redeveloping cities, transportation, manufacturing and construction to require less energy, and be more resilient to extreme weather. But surprisingly, other sectors are actually ahead of where scientists expected them to be. The team found that drastically reducing the carbon produced by our electricity supply is already technically feasible.

Now, there are costs associated with this. By the 2050 deadline, the team calculates that a given country’s economic output per person, or GDP, would be just a few percentage points lower compared to the beginning of the transition period. In the grand scheme of things, that's a better deal than many were expecting.

That said, for developing countries, that's a pretty big hit, so we need to address sharing benefits and bridging technology gaps so that no one feels like they have to use fossil fuels to compete. The report also highlights economic and health benefits like: Fewer cancer-causing compounds from fossil fuel combusting transport; more fresh air and shade from the sun with integrated urban green spaces and sustainable cities; and the ability to cross-train workers in new, well-paying jobs in green manufacturing; We can do this. We can have all of it.

And the report lays out a lot of detail on how we can get there, but the main takeaways are that we have to: ensure deep reductions in fossil fuel usage over the next decade, electrify cars, homes, appliances and more, improve energy efficiency, and rapidly switch to alternative fuels. It also states that we’re also going to need to remove greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere. This will be in the form of planting, repairing, and protecting natural carbon sinks, like forests, that not only suck up carbon dioxide, but can also provide a cooling effect for areas around them.

And of course, there's mention of Carbon Capture; it works by capturing atmospheric CO2 and storing it, and while it’s no silver bullet, it’s likely to be an important tool if we can deploy it at scale. The team emphasizes that having plans for carbon capture does not mean that we can continue to use fossil fuels as we have and fix it later. The problem is that, according to the report, certain governments and business interests often want to do just that.

Or at least, say they’re going to do just that, and hope that it works. Unsurprisingly, fossil fuel companies continue to lobby against these climate policies for their own financial gain. Such is the impact of this issue that the UN secretary general, António Guterres, issued a statement alongside this IPCC report’s publication.

In it, he urged people to hold their leaders accountable, and to “build a grassroots movement that cannot be ignored.” This third report also urges adaptation. In short, we need to adapt to changes that we’re already seeing, and make sure that our approach is equitable. Because climate change is happening now.

And despite extreme weather events now happening worldwide, some countries are feeling it way more than others. And always, the people with resources to deal with it are going to do better than those who don’t have those resources. We have to acknowledge that some countries have benefited from a century or more of unsustainable land use, lifestyles, and patterns of Consumption.

And this means that the wealthier countries must support lower- and middle-income countries in their efforts to not only jump over the combustion gap but in adding capacity, via education, infrastructure, and support, for these countries to leapfrog forward into sustainable development. The message from this report is clear as day, we’ve got almost all of the pieces of the puzzle ready to go, but the window to save ourselves is rapidly closing, so we need to act fast–and act equitably. No one action will be a silver bullet to stop climate change dead in its tracks.

We need everything we have in our arsenal deployed together to fix this. Where we go from here depends largely on what we are willing to fight for. With this report, the road onwards is mapped in full: We have the tech, we can do it, we just need to force our governments and companies into action.

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