New IPCC Report Sounds Devastating Alarms – Citizens’ Climate Lobby

Editor’s Note: The new IPCC report is a devastating 3,500 page call to arms; here are some summaries from leading climate editors who have reviewed it.

Maxine Joselow, with research by Vanessa Montalbano

Five things to know about the U.N. climate report released today

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change today released a sweeping report on the dangerous effects that rising global temperatures are already having — and the catastrophes that loom if humanity fails to make swift and significant cuts to planet-warming emissions.

Our colleagues Brady Dennis and Sarah Kaplan spent hours poring over the more than 3,500-page document, which is full of devastating details about the severe — and profoundly unequal — toll of the climate crisis on living things.

For an in-depth look at the report, we highly recommend reading Brady and Sarah’s piece. But if you’re short on time today, here are five main things to know about the panel’s report:

1. SOME CLIMATE EFFECTS ARE ALREADY BAKED IN

Humanity has pumped more than a trillion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere since the late 19th century, fueling an average global temperature rise of more than 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to preindustrial levels.

Even if those emissions were to stop tomorrow, they have already set in motion some unavoidable effects across the globe.

Fish are dying in oceans that have heated up and become more acidic. Climate disasters such as supercharged wildfires, hurricanes and floods have claimed lives and ravaged communities.

Even if humanity meets the more ambitious goal of the Paris agreement — limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels — scientists project the demise of most coral reefs and the irreversible loss of glaciers and polar ice by the end of the century.

2. IT’S NOT TOO LATE TO PREVENT SOME OF THE POTENTIAL SUFFERING

Despite these irreversible effects, the report emphasizes that humanity still has time to act to stave off more suffering in the future.

In addition to mitigation, which involves making deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, scientists say humanity must make significant investments in adaptation, which entails coping with the consequences of a warming Earth.

For example, investments in infrastructure would reduce the damage inflicted by extreme weather. And investments in public health would prevent the spread of diseases such as malaria and dengue fever, which have flourished as the world warms and mosquitoes roam beyond their current habitats.

Scientists estimate that for every dollar spent on resilience and adaptation, countries could save at least $4 over time.

3. WARMING IS WIDENING INEQUITIES BETWEEN RICH AND POOR NATIONS

Many developing countries have released little carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, yet they are most vulnerable to the effects of the climate crisis. The report makes clear that these inequities will persist as the world warms.

Even under moderate scenarios for sea-level rise, the coastlines of most Pacific Island nations would be flooded. And under the worst-case scenario for global temperature rise, Africa — which is historically responsible for less than 3 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions — would see a 118-fold increase in exposure to extreme heat. By contrast, heat exposure in Europe would increase only fourfold.

So far, wealthy countries have failed to fulfill their promise to provide $100 billion annually to help poor nations green their economies and adapt to climate effects. Developed nations will probably face intense pressure to deliver on this pledge at the next U.N. climate summit in Egypt in November.

4. THE CLIMATE CRISIS IS INTERTWINED WITH THE BIODIVERSITY CRISIS

Global warming is already threatening plants and animals by shifting seasonal weather patterns and intensifying habitat-destroying disasters. If global temperatures rise by 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), 10 percent of all plant and animal species could face a high risk of extinction, the report says.

At 3.2 Celsius (5.8 Fahrenheit), a quarter of all salamanders could go extinct. By 4 Celsius (7.2 Fahrenheit), half of the Amazon rainforest could be lost.

5. THE TIME TO ACT IS NOW

For all of the sobering statistics in the report, its overarching message is not one of hopelessness, but of urgency to act, our colleagues Brady and Sarah write.

Humanity still has a limited window to overhaul the way energy is generated, the way cities are designed and the way food is grown — changes that ultimately could save trillions of dollars and millions of lives.

“These are projections, they are not predictions,” Patrick Gonzalez, a lead author of the report and a climate scientist at the University of California at Berkeley, told our colleagues of the findings. “It’s all based on humans and our actions. The future is something we can change.”

With attention fixed on the war raging in Ukraine just days after an invasion by Russia, there’s a greater-than-normal risk that the latest report from the coalition of top scientists on the UN-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will go overlooked. Which is, in a way, something that the hundreds of authors worried about in compiling this 3,500-page report: Among the worst-case scenarios analyzed for future warming is a world where “a resurgent nationalism, concerns about competitiveness and security, and regional conflicts” make global collaboration nearly impossible.

Released today, Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability focuses on the interplay that connects warming-driven impacts such as heat waves and floods to ecosystems and human society. The IPCC scientists determine that some impacts are already “irreversible” and that as many as 3.6 billion people now live in settings that are “highly vulnerable to climate change.” (Read Bloomberg Green’s full story on the latest report here.)

The report characterizes adaptation measures so far as halting and insufficient and makes the consequences of inaction wrenchingly clear. The world isn’t reducing greenhouse-gas emissions fast enough, which makes adapting to climate change more critical and also more difficult. Nations are moving too slowly to learn to live with destructive effects, leading to human hardship — not just in the future, but visible right now.

Here are five key arguments from the latest IPCC report on climate adaptation, or how humanity learns to live with warming temperatures:

1. There’s no more waiting for climate change

Climate-related impacts are already “widespread” and, in some cases, “irreversible,” according to the IPCC. Heat-related human mortality has risen. Extreme weather events and temperatures have exposed millions of people to food insecurity and malnutrition. Agriculture, tourism and other climate-sensitive sectors are seeing losses. Fisheries are in decline in some regions. Migration tied to climate shifts is rising.

The previous version of this report, from 2014, spent a lot of ink on projected impacts; the new report noticeably devotes pages and pages to events that have already occurred. “The whole idea that this is a distant issue in space or time or relevance? [The new IPCC] report shoots that right down,” said Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy. “It says: It is right here, wherever you live. It is right now, not in the future, and it is affecting every aspect of our lives.”

2. ‘It is now adapt or die’

Rich countries that are most responsible for carbon-dioxide pollution have the most resources to prepare for its effects, whether or not they choose to do so. Poorer countries with little to no responsibility for climate change face the brunt of the assault — and aren’t receiving promised help from the developed world. The divide also holds within countries; low-income and marginalized communities in prosperous nations are far more vulnerable than their immediate neighbors.

“It may sound hyperbolic to you but my take is that for many vulnerable countries, it is now adapt or die,” said Patrick Verkooijen, chief executive officer of the Netherlands-based Center on Global Adaptation. “The time for large-scale investments in adaptation is absolutely now. Rich countries can no longer leave the most vulnerable nations out to dry.”

3. The clock is ticking

Scientists have a word that describes what happens if nations miss their pollution limits and the world heats up past 1.5°C: “overshoot.” Implicit in this idea is that by using nature or technology to draw down greenhouse-gas levels, people can return the temperature back below the limit. The new IPCC report warns that even if nations are able to do that — a big if — there will still be “additional severe risks,” some of which are “irreversible” compared to scenarios without overshoot. Up to 14% of land-based animal species are at risk of extinction once the 1.5°C threshold is passed, the IPCC warned.

This fact informs the physical limitation to climate adaptation and shapes the IPCC’s guidance to reduce emissions as quickly as possible. Cuts today are much more valuable than the same cuts in five or 10 years.

4. What’s needed beyond cutting emissions

For emissions cuts, the task is clear. The world needs to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to zero by midcentury and halve 2010 levels by 2030, the IPCC reported in 2018.

But since some further warming is unavoidable, nations’ preparedness matters — a lot. Effective adaptation measures are critical. The problem is that efforts so far tend to be fragmented and short-term, according to the IPCC. Plus, adaptation efforts are often underfunded. And as warming increases, their effectiveness will go down.

What might the world look like after 2°C of warming above pre-industrial levels? “That question can’t be answered unless you also tell me, well, what are we assuming about the condition of society?” said Brian O’Neill, director of the Joint Global Change Research Institute in Maryland and a chief author of the report’s chapter on future risks.

5. Not enough is being done

The rate of global emissions growth had plateaued in the years before the pandemic, and inexpensive renewable power makes it possible to sharply curtail emissions. But atmospheric CO₂ is not falling yet and, as the report makes clear, societies are not pursuing anything resembling the far-reaching changes they will need to in order to protect themselves.

“Every fraction of a degree matters when it comes to impacts of climate change,” said Stephanie Roe, global lead scientist for climate and energy at the environmental nonprofit WWF. “So we can still reduce the effects or the impacts by effectively deploying adaptation measures.”—With Leslie Kaufman

Eric Roston writes the Climate Report newsletter about the impact of global warming.