The chance to secure a livable future for everyone on Earth is slipping away.

That was the dire message from a United Nations report released Monday, the culmination of more than six years of work by thousands of climate scientists contributing to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 

“There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all,” the report’s authors wrote. 

Still, there’s hope. 

The world is approaching a point of no return to combat climate change and prevent irreversible damage caused by global warming, a report released Monday by the United Nations concludes.

The warning from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is reminiscent of past doomsday rhetoric calling for immediate and extreme action that often draws skepticism from critics over the urgency of the problem.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a behemoth report on our warming world—something it has done routinely for three decades. Though the findings have evolved considerably over the years, the news cycle is always strikingly similar: World leaders offer bombastic soundbites, and headlines warn of impending doom. In turn, many people will interpret this report as a stark warning that humans are joy-riding down the highway to hell.

UN chief Antonio Guterres says a major new report on climate change is a "survival guide for humanity".

Clean energy and technology can be exploited to avoid the growing climate disaster, the report says.

But at a meeting in Switzerland to agree their findings, climate scientists warned a key global temperature goal will likely be missed.

Their report lays out how rapid cuts to fossil fuels can avert the worst effects of climate change.

A landmark U.N. report published Monday urged governments across the globe to embark on an urgent course correction to tackle the climate emergency, warning current plans were insufficient to prevent the worst of what the crisis has in store.

The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said the unprecedented challenge of keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels had become even greater in recent years due to the relentless increase in global greenhouse gas emissions.