Climate change is happening and it's going to be bad. That much is undeniable. But it's up to us to decide just how bad it's going to get.
That's the finding at the heart of the latest report from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the sixth assessment report and first since 2014. Despite much of the world recognizing the reality of climate change and signing on to the Paris Climate Agreement in the intervening time, not enough has been done to reduce greenhouse emissions and attempt to limit the planet's rising temperature. That has left us facing a "code red for humanity," according to UN Secretary General António Guterres, where extreme weather and warming is locked in for the foreseeable future — but we can still take action to prevent a worst-case scenario from coming to fruition.
