A new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggests that Earth’s future is bleak without an immediate and monumental intervention. The panel responsible for the study consisted of 91 scientists brought together by the United Nations to do in-depth research on the current state of the environment in order to predict its future. They reviewed thousands of studies to come to their conclusions.
Their prediction isn’t pretty. The scientists claim that by 2040, the world will face massive food shortages, widespread wildfires, droughts, and the death of coral reefs. If the global community doesn’t greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, temperatures will increase by nearly 3 degrees in just 20 years, they predict. These negative events, by their estimation, will occur much sooner than predicted in the past.
The report concludes that it’s unlikely we will be able to prevent this atmospheric warming in enough time to avert possible disaster. They estimate that the world would have to reduce greenhouse gases by 45 percent within 12 years, end our dependence on coal, and massively increase the use of clean energy sources.
It also concludes that it’s doubtful these changes will actually happen. The everyday lives of people around the world would need to change immediately and drastically — something the current political climate makes impossible.
The United Nations commissioned this report as part of the Paris Agreement. While most countries around the world initially signed the agreement, President Trump announced his intentions to withdraw the United States from it. The U.S. has tentatively accepted the report’s findings but specified that it does not endorse them. Given the president’s position on climate change and the Paris Agreement, it’s unclear what impact it will have on the country’s current environmental policies.
The scientists behind the report estimate that if left unchecked, these climate problems will cost the world $54 trillion in damages.
