An NDP MP is urging the federal government to honour the ambitious new emissions targets set out by the United Nations.

On Monday, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report saying the world’s most stringent climate-change goals will not be met. The report found the world is on track to warm by 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels from 2032 to 2050.

To mitigate the impacts of climate change on the environment, the report found global net emissions of carbon dioxide would need to fall by 45 per cent from 2010 levels by 2030 and reach net zero to keep warming within the 1.5 C range.

NDP environment critic Alexandre Boulerice said he would like to see the government honour these new targets, because the deadline is fast approaching.

“We cannot wait anymore,” he told iPolitics. “It’s maybe our last chance to change the course of events before 2030. That’s in 12 years. For the planet, that’s really, really fast.”

Limiting the temperature increase to 1.5 C would mean fewer climate-related deaths or displacements from extreme heat or severe weather, the report continued.

In order to meet these new targets, Canada would have to cut its total emissions in half over the next 12 years, to a cap of 385 million tonnes emitted per year. When it signed the Paris Agreement, Canada said it would reduce emissions by 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030.

Environment Minister Catherine McKenna already knew what the IPCC was going to report, according to the Canadian Press. She said the findings reinforce the need for all countries to act to slow climate change.

“We acknowledge this, and we all know we need to do more,” she said. “That’s why the Paris Agreement is set up the way it is. Every country in the world needs to take action, and then we need to be more ambitious about the action we are willing to take.”

However, McKenna said there are no immediate plans to increase Canada’s own goals in light of the report’s new findings. The government will continue implementing its current federal plan, which includes a national price on carbon and phasing out coal-fired power plants.

The government created the first Pan-Canadian Framework on Climate Change in December 2016, which it argues “puts Canada on the path” to meeting these ambitious targets.

Still, a 2018 report from the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development found Canada was struggling to reduce emissions to Paris Agreement levels. To meet the 2030 goals, the commissioner said “substantial effort … beyond those currently planned or in place” would have to come into effect.

The report found only New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were on track to meet their provincial emissions targets by the time of publication.

Central to Canada’s climate-change plan is a national carbon tax that will put a minimum price of $10 per tonne on emitters by 2019, rising to $50 per tonne by 2022. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said last week the tax will be enforced on provinces that do not have their own regulatory systems in place by 2019.

“We have decided as a government, and Canadians asked us to do this in 2015, that we are going to put a price on pollution,” he told reporters last week in Windsor, Ont.

Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Ontario have all denounced the federal government’s carbon-tax plan.

So have the federal Conservatives, who are currently working on their own climate-change strategy ahead of next year’s election.

“You can’t run a candidacy in the next election without having an answer to what you’re going to do about climate change,” Conservative MP Lisa Raitt told iPolitics. “We know that, and we’ll have that … but it won’t be a carbon tax.”

An Abacus Data poll from 2017 found 85 per cent of respondents believe inaction on climate change will create severe consequences in a range of areas. Forty-nine per cent said they won’t vote for a party or candidate who doesn’t have a plan to address climate change.

Raitt said the party’s political analysts are currently working to find other solutions to climate change, such as mitigation and adaptation.

Either way, Boulerice and Raitt agree Canada needs to do more.

“We all agree we have to do better,” Raitt said.

The summer’s news of forest fires lighting up British Columbia and northern Ontario has people talking, Boulerice said. More than 90 people died this year from an unexpected heat wave in Boulerice’s home province of Quebec.

Boulerice said the time to act is now, even though the climate-change debate has been raging for almost two decades.

“It’s not normal, and people are starting to realize that this is a trend,” he said. “It’s only going to get worse.”

With files from Marieke Walsh and the Canadian Press