[ad_1]
One scientist suggests we call the latest IPCC report the “Your House Is on Fire” report.
Photo by David McNew/Getty Images
Six months after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its report, its “code red” climate reportThis is a new, damning assessment of the effect global warming will make on daily life. Call it the “Your House Is on Fire” report, one scientist suggested to the Associated Press, or “an atlas of human suffering,” as United Nations secretary-general António Guterres put it. Either way, the forecast is (once again) bleak: Warming is outpacing the world’s capacity to adapt to the conditions outlined in August’s report. People living in vulnerable areas may find it difficult to overcome the obstacles of a hostile environment without drastic and global emissions reductions.
The IPCC’s latest report looks at the science behind the climate crisis and attempts to chart a timeline for the worst possible outcomes, concluding that We are close to running out of time for the worst-case scenario.. Without unprecedented, transformational intervention, the world would likely exceed the climatic tipping point — 1.5 degrees Celsius of atmospheric warming — within the next ten years, cementing extreme weather events, withering droughts, and destructive rises in sea levels as the norm. Monday’s ReportThe report, which was compiled by 270 researchers from 67 countries, gives a detailed picture of how life on an increasingly inhabitable planet might look. It warns of the danger that adaptation efforts will not be enough to solve the problem, especially in developing nations that have contributed less to overall warming.
Already, wildfire seasons on North America’s West Coast seem to worsen every season, taking lives, destroying homes, incinerating farmland, and sometimes Separate weather catastrophes can be triggered. According to the report, 13 million people were forced from their homes in Asia, Africa and Africa by floods, storms, or other environmental emergencies in 2019. Increasing temperatures and escalating droughts could worsen food shortages. The population living with the threat of severe coastal flooding could expand by 20 percent if protections aren’t put in place. If the temperature rises to two degrees Celsius, drought could lead to water shortages for between 800 million-three billion people. A global temperature of three degrees Celsius could result in five times more extreme weather events. This could lead directly to mass displacement, death, and disease.
The climate crisis is affecting pretty much every area of the globe — see: Wildfires in the Arctic; Floods that are colossalGermany; Super-cyclone followed immediately by a monsoon in Bangladesh — but across the board, the report warns that implications for developing nations will be far worse than for wealthy countries. The report also predicts that wealthy nations will continue to see the poor, the elderly, and the sick as the ones most affected. “People with the fewest resources, those least responsible for the climate crisis, bear the brunt of climate impacts,” Ani Dasgupta, the president of the World Resources Institute, told the New York Times. “If you don’t live in a hot spot, imagine instead a roof blown away, a village well overwhelmed by salt water, a failed crop, a job lost, a meal skipped — all at once, again and again.”
That prognosis should not be surprising: The global North has produced the overwhelming majority of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions with G20 countries responsible for 80 percentThat’s a total of 62. If this is an “unequivocally” manmade disaster, as August’s report made clear, then it is also a crisis of entrenched inequality. But, as the TimesNotes that the $100 billion in climate aid pledged by wealthy countries to developing nations each year has consistently fallen short of the mark to the tune of tens to billions of dollars each year. The U.N. Gaston Browne, Antigua and Barbuda’s prime minister, spoke out at the U.N. Climate Summit in November. He said that even though these countries have reneged on their promises, they continue to pour money into fossil fuels (as high as $3.3 trillion since 2015).
Right now Warming of two to three degreesClimate Action Tracker suggests that this is the most likely outcome. To maintain below 1.5 degrees Celsius, the world needs to reduce carbon emissions 100 percent by 2050. Untethered to reality, a goal that is currently unattainable. Yet, the report offers solutions and emphasizes the need for “transformative changes in our behavior and infrastructure” rather than a reliance on continual adaptation. For example, if we are aware that coastal flooding will bring escalating devastation over the next few years, it doesn’t make sense to develop those areas; instead, it would be wise to focus on shoring up inland infrastructure and strengthening access to the resources people need — food, medicine, water — in a crisis. In other words, it’s still possible to make preparations for the future we know is coming.
These warnings should be read every few months and viewed regularly. politicians shoot ambitious climate policy dead in the water, it’s hard not to wonder how much evidence would finally catalyze the radical change that’s called for — and how irreversibly bad things will have become, how high the cost we’ll have paid, if we get there. Speaking to the AP, experts offered a reminder about hope: “If you’re afraid of something, then you hide away, you shy away, you run away,” German vice-chancellor and minister for economy and climate Robert Habeck said. “If you hope for something, then you can find some motivation, power and energy in yourself.” The house is on fire, but get out the hoses immediately and some things can still be saved. For now, at least — but that won’t be the case forever.
