On the brink
The world is already standing at the brink of failure when it comes to combatting climate change, according to a dire report from the United Nations’ intergovernmental scientific panel on climate change. The U.N. panel is considered the top international body studying the phenomenon.
Its report, issued on Monday, is shocking.
Not only is climate change already here, but it’s going to get worse very quickly.
The report describes a planet of worsening wildfires, droughts and food shortages, along with inundated coastlines and massive coral reef die-offs. It could be here as soon as 2040.
There’s even more bad news.
Under the 2015 Paris climate agreement, nearly 200 nations agreed to slice greenhouse gas emissions enough to stave off a temperature increase of 2 degrees Celsius (about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).
Unfortunately, the scientists found, most land regions are warming faster than the global average: “Warming in many regions has already exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.” Over a fifth of the global population lives in regions that have already reached this level of warming, they concluded.
There is no positive way to spin these devastating conclusions.
There’s no easy way out, either.
“Warming will not be limited to 1.5 (degrees Celsius) or 2 (degrees Celsius) (without) transformations,” the scientists wrote. Their recommended transformations include phasing out coal completely and transforming the carbon footprint of our food.
At the moment, such transformations may be politically impossible. President Trump, who leads the world’s secondlargest greenhouse gas emitter, is trying to increase coal use and has pulled the nation out of the Paris agreement.
Yet what the report also makes clear is that nonaction comes with enormous price tags of its own. The most serious damage associated with climate change comes with a price tag of $54 trillion — and that’s before accounting for the costs of increased poverty, weather-related immigration and other dramatic human damages.
California has led the way on climate change, but we can’t do it alone. Only concerted federal leadership can move the world’s largest economy toward our necessary future. Sadly, the cost of Washington’s lack of leadership is becoming grimmer by the day.