Urgent action needed to address climate change’s catastrophic threats, UN report warns
Climate change will put people’s lives and Earth’s ecosystems at increasing risk of catastrophe if nations fail to quickly reduce emissions of planet-heating gases, according to a new United Nations report that urges humankind to scale up efforts to adapt and protect the most vulnerable.
As global warming continues to unleash deadly heat waves, intense droughts, floods and devastating wildfires, the researchers from 67 countries called for urgent action to address the crisis. They said many of the dangerous and accelerating impacts can still be reduced, depending on how quickly the burning of fossil fuels and emissions of greenhouse gases are curbed.
The report, which was released Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, documents how climate-driven weather extremes have exposed millions of people to water shortages and acute food insecurity, and how many of the planet’s surviving species are vulnerable to global warming.
The scientists said the fates of natural ecosystems and human populations are interconnected, that safeguarding nature is critical to addressing climate change and that approximately 3.3 billion to 3.6 billion people worldwide are highly vulnerable.
“The scientific evidence is unequivocal: climate change is a threat to human well-being and the health of the planet,”
