UN Fear that Climate Change May Become Irreversible

Many see climate change as the single greatest present threat to humanity. Yet despite the warnings by scientists about the dangers of climate change, a UN report says it is about to get a lot worse.

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report states that the impact of humans on the planet could continue to increase global warming. If the level of global warming is limited to just ‘a few tenths of a degree’, Earth will degrade in 127 different ways and some of these could be ‘potentially irreversible’.

More than 1,000 pages of analysis were written and then edited by governments and scientists to a 36-page summary. The report states that climate change is a threat to the health of both humans and the planet, and further delays in cutting carbon emissions will cause us to miss an already ‘rapidly closing window of opportunity’ to secure a livable future for the human race.

The IPCC report also highlighted how the concerning danger of climate change is affecting people’s mental health. Young people in particular are concerned about what is happening to the planet and worried about what they can expect in the future, which according to the report, will be marked by much more extreme weather.

According to the IPCC report, people in the year 2100 are going to experience four times more climate extremes than we currently do. Even if the planet only heats up by another fraction of a degree, the effects will be significant. Already around 3.3 billion people’s daily lives are ‘highly vulnerable to climate change’ with them being 15 times more likely to die from extreme weather, the report says. People’s homes and communities are being destroyed, and large numbers of people are being displaced as a result of ever worsening extreme weather events. This is mainly happening to people living in the poorest parts of the world, while the causes of climate change are happening in the richest parts of the world.

The report goes on to say that more people are going to die each year from heatwaves, air pollution, disease and starvation because of global warming. How many lives are lost will depend on how much heat-trapping gas from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas gets released into the air and how the world adapts to an ever-hotter world.

However, some of the risks can still be reduced, or even prevented, if acted on quickly. Helen Adams of King’s College London, who co-authored the report, said “Climate change is killing people”, adding that “things are bad, but actually the future depends on us, not the climate”.