Global warming is affecting every part of the planet. Humans should have started preparing yesterday.
A body of experts convened by the United Nations has put out its most comprehensive look to date at how climate change is affecting our homes, health, livelihoods and infrastructure, as well as the natural systems upon which they all depend. The picture is not a cheery one. The report, which was approved by 195 governments, shows how widespread and severe the impacts of human-caused global warming are becoming worldwide — and how hard it will be for societies and ecosystems to manage if nations do not bring greenhouse gas emissions down sharply. Read complete coverage of the I.P.C.C. report. “Any further delay in concerted anticipatory global action,” the report says, “will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all.” Here are five main findings: This group of experts, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, put out its last big survey of the impacts of climate change in 2014. (It put out a separate report last year on the physical drivers of climate change.) Back in 2014, its report said there was “limited evidence” that nations needed more money to cope with the dangers than was being allocated. Global warming was having a “relatively small” effect on human health, the panel’s report said, compared with other stressors. Eight years later, it is a different story. The new report finds that climate change is not only adding to ecological threats such as wildfires, heat waves and rising sea levels, it is also displacing people from their homes and jeopardizing food and water supplies. It is harming people’s physical and mental health, with increasing incidence of food and waterborne illness, respiratory distress from wildfire smoke and trauma from natural disasters.
