A new report from the United Nations offers a terrifying and stark forecast of the immediate consequences of climate change—far worse than previous thought, as The New York Times put it.
One particular noteworthy point offered up is a call for cities to transition to electrification, and fast.
The report, issued on Monday by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said worsening food shortages, wildfires, and more, can be expected as soon as 2040, unless the world dramatically transforms the global economy at a speed and scale that has “no documented historic precedent,” the Times reported. How comforting.
Severe Flooding, Against a Background of Wind Turbines: November 2012, Tyringham, Bucks. (Image: T. Larkum)
Here’s more from the Times:
The report “is quite a shock, and quite concerning,” said Bill Hare, an author of previous I.P.C.C. reports and a physicist with Climate Analytics, a nonprofit organization. “We were not aware of this just a few years ago.” The report was the first to be commissioned by world leaders under the Paris agreement, the 2015 pact by nations to fight global warming.
The authors found that if greenhouse gas emissions continue at the current rate, the atmosphere will warm up by as much as 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) above preindustrial levels by 2040, inundating coastlines and intensifying droughts and poverty. Previous work had focused on estimating the damage if average temperatures were to rise by a larger number, 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius), because that was the threshold scientists previously considered for the most severe effects of climate change.
Read more: Jalopnik