The latest report from the IPCC makes it clearer than ever that we are running, not walking, into a planetary scale disaster, said the Climate and Health Alliance Australia, Australia's peak body on climate and health, today.

Executive Director Fiona Armstrong said: "In failing to heed prior warnings, and continuing to invest in emission intensive industries and systems, many of the world's governments, including Australia, have effectively pointed the car at the cliff and hit the accelerator.

"The tipping point is now one decade earlier than the IPCC warned in 2018: in 2030, not less than ten years away.

"Over 200 scientists from 60 countries have reviewed more than 14,0000 papers for this latest report. They are making it very clear that the time for procrastination is over. With the Arctic warming faster than anywhere on Earth, the Amazon shifting from carbon sink to carbon source, all governments, businesses, and communities must now act to reduce emissions as quickly as possible this decade.

"Along with the scientists, nature itself is providing us with some messages: the disasters associated with the current northern hemisphere summer should communicate clearly to the global community what we can expect: predictable, unprecedented, destructive, violent weather events, leading to large scale loss of life and livelihoods. 

"These events are eroding our sense of safety, and highlight the volatility of a climate-changed warming world. 

"Nature, altered by our behaviour, waits for no-one. The atmosphere is driven by physics, not politics. Pretending anything else is simply delusional.

"But thankfully, we do have science on our side. Scientific evidence in this report is closely scrutinised by all the world's governments, and is approved by all governments. 

"If we act, we can avoid tens of millions of deaths over the coming decades.

"Achieving this will take everything we have as a global community, but if we fail to act, we risk losing everything we have."

Read the Sixth Assessment Report, Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis here.