At this point, the language of scientific warnings about climate cataclysm has familiar characteristics, even as it gets more dire: The climate is changing as a direct result of human activity; the change is accelerating due to our inaction; some of the consequences are now unavoidable; and it will wreak havoc on our society, plunging billions into food insecurity, storms, fires, heat waves, floods and other assorted mayhem.
The latest report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released this week, echoes these now-habitual admonitions. Yet just because you might eventually tune out a fire alarm doesn’t mean you should, at least not if you’re hoping to still have a place to live.
While some of the terminology might be the same, assessments of the intensity and extent of the potential damage, the timeframe we have to act to avoid the most devastating outcomes, and the swaths of the world that will be impacted just keep getting worse and more extreme with each assessment.
