Q&A :: Too hot for comfort

The UN’s IPCC report sends out a warning to the world to drive down greenhouse emission levels, pointing to human action as the chief source of ongoing climate change.

The fifth, most comprehensive global warming projections, released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forecast a rise in the world’s average temperatures by up to 4.8 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, as CO2 concentrations continue to rise.

In order to limit emissions to safe levels, fossil fuel deposits would have to remain untapped, which means that Poland, whose 90 percent of energy production relies on coal, should shift its energy policy towards low-carbon energy resources. Poland, however, will not stop burning coal, Prime Minister Donald Tusk has recently asserted.

“It’s all up to us, consumers, now,” says environmental activist Urszula Stefanowicz, from the Mazovian chapter of the Polish Ecological Club in Warsaw.

“We know now that we should change our way of life, which doesn’t mean it has to be less pleasant, less friendly for our children or ourselves, but it means we have to be wise to save the resources of our planet.”