A Climate Message Worth Hearing

Amidst Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — and the civilian humanitarian emergency it’s created — the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its latest climate report this week. The release received some media attention, but was largely overshadowed by tops stories like war in Ukraine and President Biden’s State of the Union speech.

Which is a shame, because the report contains a lot of messages worth hearing.

If there’s one headline takeaway, it’s that climate change is here, now, everywhere; it’s worse than we thought; and we need to urgently make progress to adapt and prevent further dangerous global warming and biological system breakdown.

In fact, one of the best ways to read the report is to start at the very end, which declares:

"The cumulative scientific evidence is unequivocal: Climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health. Any further delay in concerted anticipatory global action on adaptation and mitigation will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all. (very high confidence)"

One of the earliest charts the report prevents is this one. It’s quite busy, but it underline the point around the systemtic ubiquity of the climate crisis today. Dark blue or black dots represent high or very high impact or risk, purple’s medium impact, grey’s low impact, and white dots represent “insufficient evidence.” Needless to say, there are a lot of dark and purple dots around the world, spanning agriculture, farming, fishing, nutrition, heat, flooding, economic and infrastructure damage, and even mental health consequences.

Source: IPCC

The report, written by 270 researchers from 67 countries over eight years, is “an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership,” according to UN Secretary General António Guterres.

Ok, so it’s bad. Let’s talk about how bad, and if there are any positive or constructive learnings we can take away from it.

Biodiversity and Wildlife

One major point the IPCC report makes that’s often lost in the discourse about warming and extreme weather is climate change’s impact on animals, plants, and biodiversity. If (big if), we’re able to keep mean global warming levels of 1.5°C — the Paris Agreement target — 3 to 14% of Earth’s species “likely face very

high risk of extinction,” say researchers. However, if we don’t halt climate change and reach 5°C of warming, half of all lifeforms on the planet face extinction.

That would be catastrophic, and the biological feedback loops along the way are completely unknown.

Food Security

Another risk from climate breakdown the report puts in further perspective is global and regional food security, which in turn puts pressures on public health. Overall, researchers highlight three scenarios:

1. Adapation - We face negative impacts but limit warming to 1.5°C. For the most part, only vulnerable agricultural regions that don’t adapt, invest, and innovate are negatively impacted. Global food security is largely preserved.
2. Moderate adaptation - If we can keep warming below 2°C “Increases in frequency, intensity and severity of droughts, floods and heatwaves, and continued sea level rise will increase risks to food security (high confidence) in vulnerable regions … with no or low levels of adaptation (medium confidence).”
3. Inaction - Above 2°C: “food security risks due to climate change will be more severe, leading to malnutrition and micro-nutrient deficiencies, concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Central and South America and Small Islands (high confidence). Global warming will progressively weaken soil health and ecosystem services such as pollination, increase pressure from pests and diseases, and reduce marine animal biomass, undermining food productivity in many regions on land and in the ocean” and it gets worse from there. A continent like Africa could lose 30-50% of its productive agricultural land.

Climate scientists and economists have often use scenarios for forecasting. One of the key takeaways from this report is even our “best case” scenario still has harms, and our current trajectory as a society is not trending best case.

Additionally, the globalization of modern supply chains further spreads and interconnects these risks around the world:

“Weather and climate extremes are causing economic and societal impacts across national boundaries through supply-chains, markets, and natural resource flows, with increasing transboundary risks projected across the water, energy and food sectors (high confidence). Supply chains that rely on specialized commodities and key infrastructure can be disrupted by weather and climate extreme events.”

Many organizations and governments are already re-thinking this model, looking to grow more food locally, manufacture domestically, and reduce the environmental impacts of goods in transit over long-distances.

Weather Risks

Another informative and alarming graphic is the IPCC’s global warming weather risk chart. For example, if we’re collectively able to decarbonize along the ‘SSP1-2.6’ dark blue trajectory, limiting global warming to less than 2°C, we can largely circumvent “very high” extreme weather risks and impacts (but even still, risks will remain high).

By comparison, pretty much any “business as usual” or gradual emissions reduction trajectory sends us squarely into the deep red risk zone by 2050, if not earlier. It takes another entire page to describe all those risks.

There’s Still Time

The truth can be tough to hear, and the IPCC’s assessment is honest, sober, and frightening. But reading through it, there is a glimmer of hope. In a sense, the report itself is a call to action. Yes, things are bad, yes, they’ll get worse, but, ultimately, what we do in our lifetime, between now and 2040 matters immensely for the future of human civilization and the planet.

What we do over the next 10, 15, 20 years determines the trajectory of life on Earth for the next century+. Looking at medium to long-term climate risk, the report writes:

The last sentence is the key:

“The magnitude and rate of climate change and associated risks depend strongly on near-term mitigation and adaption actions”

This is up to us. Right now. Every government, organization, supply chain, and individual has a role to play in our collective future. There is a rapidly narrowing window of opportunity to enable climate-resilient development.

Let’s not waste any more time.

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