It's Giant Climate Report Day.
Part two of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's massive six assessment
report just dropped.
If you remember way back to August of 2021 we got part one that covered
with the science of climate change looks like now and into the future.
Today we get the Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability report: 18 chapters
and thousands of pages detailing everything
the research community knows about how human caused climate change is affecting
people and ecosystems, what's already irreversible
and what we can do to limit some of the consequences.
I'm not going to lie to you.
The contents of this report are bleak. They are upsetting.
But like the physical science report, none of this is new.
This report represents the cumulative work of thousands of scientists
and researchers and concentrates all their knowledge
into one easy to reference, albeit extremely long, document.
So what does this report actually say?
Well, big picture The report is very clear that climate change and its impacts
touch everything and everyone, but not equally.
Climate change
already is and will continue magnifying the impacts of unsustainable land use
resource extraction, pollution and social inequities.
Basically, everything bad.
Climate change makes worse and vice versa.
This report draws direct lines between climate change and serious consequences
like humanitarian crises, food insecurity, water scarcity, involuntary migration
and premature deaths.
The report makes clear that Earth's average temperatures exceeding 1.5
degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels is more than bad enough.
And that's just another half of degree of warming from today.
Past 1.5,
we start to see permanent impacts and irreversible consequences
in particularly vulnerable
areas like polar, mountain, and coastal ecosystems and communities.
Beyond that, a lot of the tools and adaptations
we use to cope with climate change stop working or are way less effective
in a world 1.5 degrees warmer Like coastal protection, benefits of mangroves
that could be obliterated by rising sea levels, or planting trees
in urban areas to reduce city temperatures that can't survive hotter summers.
By focusing on 1.5 degrees exclusively in the headline statements,
I think this report solidifies what the IPCC started saying
with its 2019 report.
Our goal should be to keep temperatures below 1.5
not the old standard of two and definitely nothing warmer.
Of course, 1.5, 2, these numbers are arbitrary.
Every fraction of a degree of warming matters
and that's highlighted really well in a new version of a figure
that's been around for a long time in IPCC reports.
And frankly, it's a pretty good summary of the risk and impact parts of this report
which probably explains
why the summary for policymakers fills two pages breaking it down.
There's a lot going on here.
So to simplify it, let's focus in this side just shows which scenarios
relate to which temperatures as we move into future climate projections.
We don't know how fast will reduce emissions.
So climate models test a whole bunch of scenarios ranging from
we get our act together, stop emitting and even start drawing carbon dioxide
out of the atmosphere.
To an oil companies fantasy land where fossil fuels are burned, like
there aren't any consequences and emissions just keep rising, but
there are consequences or reasons for concern.
Which sounds more like something a stern Elementary School teacher
might write on a report card rather than what it actually means:
The terrifying consequences if we don't do anything to prepare
and adapt to projected temperature increases.
The IPCC defines these five really broad categories
that try to encapsulate everything from coral reefs and biodiversity hotspots
to extreme droughts and floods, to global tipping points
that lead to irreversible changes in the climate system starting at the bottom.
This is where we are right now
with moderate risks and impacts for most of the categories.
Which tracks we're already seeing massive coral reef die offs, Arctic communities
losing their homes to climate-caused erosion and sea level rise, devastating
supercharged hurricanes and unequal impacts across the globe.
If the alarm bells are already going off in your head,
they're about to get cacophonous when we look
at what warmer temperatures might cause with high
risk across the board, well under two degrees of warming.
And beyond that, everything goes dark purple, very high risk, very fast.
If we roll back the time machine and check out what this figure looked like
in 2014 when the song Happy was stuck in our collective
consciousness and wouldn't budge, there's a lot less purple.
Essentially what we've learned in the last eight years
is that the consequences for humanity will get even worse
sooner than we thought and at lower temperature levels.
And we are very much
not on track to achieve a climate resilient, sustainable world.
But that doesn't mean we can't.
Beyond the impact
this report also details how we can adapt to the consequences of climate change.
Adaptation, how we respond to and reduce the impacts of climate change
is essential, especially since we can see the impacts already.
Even if emissions stop tomorrow, we still have to deal with climate impacts
that are already here
from extensive droughts and superstorms to future impacts like sea level rise.
Adapting will look different depending on where you are and what risks you face.
Coastal communities need to prepare for storm surge
and regions that are getting less rain and are drying out
need robust water management systems.
Climate change isn't going to throw anything new at us.
We've seen droughts and floods and fires before.
They're just more and bigger now.
So really with adaptation, it's less about what we do, but how we do it.
For basically every adaptation strategy, there are examples of it
helping and examples of it hurting, from early warning systems
to water resource programs to agricultural innovations.
Even if the tool is the same, the outcome can be vastly different.
We've got a fancy word for this. Maladaption.
Maladaptive responses to climate change
can create lock ins and vulnerability, exposure and risk that are difficult
and expensive to change and exacerbate existing inequalities.
Short term isolated projects that don't bother to consider who or what
they're trying to help fail and often make things worse.
Successful adaptation strategies are long term, flexible and center community
decision makers in the process, but adaptation alone isn't enough.
Because right now we're on track
to blow past the effectiveness of most of the adaptation toolkit we have.
We have to reduce emissions now.
So much of this information might feel stale if it wasn't so terrifying.
And like hot take, if we treat people in places better,
it is better for those people in places.
But there is value in the coming together of 195 countries
to sign off on this document
to a collective agreement on what the state of the research looks like.
And like all IPCC reports, none of this information is new.
It's a collection of the last eight years of research,
building on decades of research from all the previous assessment
reports and scientific community and what all that research tells us.
We need to radically transform the systems that create our society
to address inequality, to reduce the impact
we're already experiencing from warming,
and to fend off even more dire consequences.
And we're running out of time to do that.
The report says we have a narrowing window for action.
It isn't closed, but it is closing.
And it's going to take a Herculean amount of effort to reduce global emissions,
to protect everyone already at risk, and to do so
in a way that doesn't leave anyone behind which is a daunting task.
Fortunately, solutions exist.
There are adaptation strategies at work, and there are
millions of people around the world working to make those a reality.
Make sure you're one of them.
This report
is massive, so obviously I can't cover all of it in a short video.
I've included a link below to a playlist of other Creator's videos
if you want to get more perspectives and information.
Thanks so much for watching.