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A new United Nations ReportThe report details the increasing impacts of climate change and warns governments that if they fail to act, an environmental crisis will be brewing faster than we can adapt. “This report is a dire warning about the consequences of inaction,” SaysHoesung Lee is the Chair of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “Half measures are no longer an option.”
Released on February 28, the new report, titled “Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability,” is the second of three reports, following an August 2021 “code red” warning on climate change. Although the impacts of animal agriculture were not a focus of this report, the third expected in April will explore strategies to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions—an opportunity to address this major contributor to global warming and pollution.
Last year’s report highlighted that certain climate trends, such as the rise in sea levels, were already irreversible. The new report criticizes the failure of world leaders to address the dangers we can face.
At the time of last year’s report, the IPCC Not noted that there was still time to address climate change by reducing GHG emissions—and that if we do so, “potentially in 20 to 30 years global temperatures could stabilize.” Yet, UN Secretary-General António Guterres calls the 2022 report, which takes aim at fossil fuels and misinformation on climate change among other threats, “a damning indictment of failed climate leadership.”
“Any further delay in concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future,” Says Hans-Otto Pörtner, IPCC Working Group II Co-Chair.
The report’s findings highlight the importance of biodiversity, and the interconnectedness of humans and other species and ecosystems under siege as the planet changes. “Increased heat waves, droughts, and floods are already exceeding plants’ and animals’ tolerance thresholds,” WritesThe UN. The intergovernmental agency called for “ambitious, accelerated action,” including “rapid, deep cuts” to GHG emissions. The next report, due in April, will give more details about how cuts could be achieved.
To address the harmful buildup in GHGs in the atmosphere, we must take the following steps: Impacts of our food systemNot to be overlooked. Particularly in Western nations such as the U.S., where meat consumption has been a long tradition On the rise, food production is heavily dominated by industrial agriculture—including high-emitting factory farms in which 99 percentof farmed animals are raised.
Animal agriculture contributes more than 37 percent of the world’s GHG emissions and is a leading driver of air and water pollution, land usage, and an increasingly alarming threat: deforestation. Large swathes of forestland have been cleared for livestock grazing, or animal feed production. threatening vital ecosystemsAmazon, Cerrado, as well as elsewhere. A recent investigation found that deforestation of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest for soy farming It has continuedDespite an international moratorium, they continued to operate. The news comes not long after Mongabay reported that the Amazon, a vitally important biome that has long helped us store harmful carbon from the Earth’s atmosphere, has now begun to It emits more carbon than it can capture.
Climate discussions often ignore the production of meat, milk, and other animal-based food products. It was, as it was by world-leading leaders at the COP26 conference, the IPCC’s new report does mention shifts toward plant-based foods and advancements in food technologies such as cultured meat as ways to lessen our impacts.
Biodiversity was also a topic at the UN Environment Assembly. It just concluded on March 2, and resulted resolutions. Protect animalsThey also depend on the habitats for their survival. “The Ministerial Declaration stressed the urgent need to halt the global decline of biodiversity and the fragmentation of habitats, unprecedented in human history,” writes the UN Environment Programme, stating that these problems are “driven by…unsustainable consumption and production patterns, climate change,” and other human-induced threats.
The IPCC’s new report warns that we are not acting quickly enough to mitigate these threats. Inger Andersen, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme, cautionedClimate change is not a distant threat.
“It’s already upon us, raining down blows on billions of people,” she said.
Andersen is just one of many global leaders who are calling for more funding and action to combat climate change. This includes the reduction of GHG emissions as well as the restoration of ecosystems.
“We can’t keep taking the hits and treating the wounds,” she said. “Soon those wounds will be too deep, too catastrophic, to heal.”
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