'Now or never' to avoid climate catastrophe, warns UN

Humanity has less than three years to halt the rise of planet-warming carbon emissions and less than a decade to slash them almost in half, the UN said in a landmark report on stopping global warming and ensuring a "liveable future".

That daunting task is still - and only just - possible, but current policies are leading the planet towards catastrophic temperature rises, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) made clear.