This is such an important topic to me. Humans are truly ruining the earth, and I believe something has to actually change. I got inspired to make a post about this because of a very recent report regarding the climate crisis. I dug through the report, and here are some of the most important conclusions in my opinion.
The website where the document can be found is here: Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. I read the summary for policy makers.
Let’s dive into what I think are some of the most important points in the summary of the report:
Global warming, reaching 1.5°C in the near-term, would cause unavoidable increases in multiple climate hazards and present multiple risks to ecosystems and humans.
Human-induced climate change, including more frequent and intense extreme events, has caused widespread adverse impacts and related losses and damages to nature and people, beyond natural climate variability.
Observed increases in areas burned by wildfires have been attributed to human-induced climate change
in some regions
Hundreds of local losses of species have been driven by increases in the magnitude of heat extremes.
Increasing weather and climate extreme events have exposed millions of people to acute food insecurity and reduced water security, with the largest impacts observed in many locations and/or communities in Africa, Asia, Central and South America, Small Islands and the Arctic.
In urban settings, observed climate change has caused impacts on human health, livelihoods and key infrastructure
Climate change has adversely affected physical health of people globally and mental health of people in the assessed regions.
Near-term warming and increased frequency, severity and duration of extreme events will place many terrestrial, freshwater, coastal and marine ecosystems at high or very high risks of biodiversity loss.
Biodiversity loss and degradation, damages to and transformation of ecosystems are already key risks for every region due to past
global warming and will continue to escalate with every increment of global warming.
If global warming transiently exceeds 1.5°C in the coming decades or later (overshoot), then many human and natural systems will face additional severe risks, compared to remaining below 1.5°C.
This is awful, you really start to wonder what the heck we are doing to this earth. It’s not all bad though, they also say that adaptation is possible and effective to offset negative effects, but still, we should really do more prevent in my opinion and there are limitations to these adaptations they describe. This shows again that it really is now or never. So, what are everyone thoughts on this, how do you feel about this report and climate change in general, and more importantly, where should we go from here?