An even bigger alarm bell sounds on climate change
by David Atkins
It’s almost as if it’s really f’ing serious:
Humans risk causing irreversible and widespread damage to the planet unless there’s faster action to limit the fossil fuel emissions that cause climate change, according to a leaked draft United Nations report.
Global warming already is impacting “all continents and across the oceans,” and further pollution from heat-trapping gases will raise the likelihood of “severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems,” according to the document obtained by Bloomberg.
“Without additional mitigation, and even with adaptation, warming by the end of the 21st century will lead to high to very high risk of severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts globally,” the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in the draft.
The study is the most important document produced by the UN about global warming, summarizing hundreds of papers. It’s designed to present the best scientific and economic analysis to government leaders and policymakers worldwide. It feeds into the UN-led effort drawing in more than 190 nations for an agreement on limiting emissions.
Inequality and climate are the two defining issues of the 21st century, and they’re related. Eventually everyone reading this will be dead. The ones who come after will judge us on how we handled, above all, these two issues.
So far we’re not looking very impressive as a species.
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