What You Need To Know From The Latest Major Climate Reports

Since the Industrial Revolution, humanity has emitted more than one trillion tons of carbon dioxide.¹ These emissions have primarily been generated by burning fossil fuels, mostly coal, oil, and natural gas. Fossil fuels have powered industrialization around the world and are essential for the daily livelihoods of billions of people. They help us eat, move, and build in previously unimaginable ways.

When we began burning fossil fuels in the 19th century, the consequences of doing so were not widely understood or considered. Over time, our scientific understanding of the greenhouse effect - a process that occurs when certain gases trap solar radiation in the atmosphere and inhibit its release—has grown.

So have our annual emissions. In 1850, humanity emitted less than one billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. In 1950, it grew to six billion tons. Two thousand emissions exceeded 25 billion tons, and we now emit almost 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year.

These emissions have driven economic growth and powered our modern way of life. But they have also caused a climate crisis of epic proportions, which existentially threatens our civilization.

To scientifically catalog the dangers posed by human influence on the environment, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been periodically releasing thorough reports on climate change for over three decades. It’s an international body composed of leading scientists who collectively update our understanding of climate change.

To date, the IPCC has released six assessment reports detailing the causes and effects of climate change. They include recommendations in their reports but emphasize that it’s up to all of us to address the climate crisis. And as the science in the most recent assessment report—released in three parts over the last year—makes clear, we have a lot of work to do to restore the health of our planet.

Climate Impacts

The IPCC doesn’t beat around the bush when it comes to explaining who has caused the climate crisis: it’s us. As the report states, “it is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean, and land.” Since the Industrial Revolution, we’ve boosted the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by about 50%² (from ~280 parts per million to ~420 parts per million). And thanks to this atmospheric carbon boost, average global temperatures have risen by 1.2 degrees Celsius³ since the start of the industrial area and are poised to surpass the dreaded 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold within a decade or two.

The latest IPCC report details the physical impacts of the climate crisis with greater confidence, breadth, and depth than previous reports. And the findings are terrifying. Climate change is likely making tropical cyclones more frequent and more severe. It’s doing the same thing to other heavy precipitation events as well as heat waves. It’s making cold waves less frequent and less severe. As such, up to 3.6 billion people - almost half of all the human beings alive—already live in areas “highly vulnerable to climate change.”⁴

Since the previous assessment report was released in 2013, scientific advances have allowed for better projections of climate impacts around the world. For instance, even at 1.5 degrees Celsius, heavy rain and flooding are projected to intensify in affluent and less affluent areas, dispelling the notion that one can escape the climate crisis. If emissions were to continue, additional warming would lead to exponentially worsening impacts.

As the Washington Post summarized in February, “projected loss of forests and thawing of permafrost under some of the worst-case warming scenarios would add the equivalent of 15 years’ worth of greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere. But curbing warming to below 2 degrees Celsius would cut emissions from these ecosystems by more than half.”⁵

Likewise, the number of people who will live in areas exposed to water scarcity is projected to be about a billion higher at 2 degrees of warming relative to 1.5 degrees.

Geographically Unequal Causes And Impacts

Arguably the most insidious aspect of the climate crisis is the stark disparity between the parts of the world that have principally caused it and the areas that will suffer most from it. For instance, Africa has contributed less than three percent of cumulative global emissions but is projected to experience over half of the near-term excess deaths from climate-related illnesses.⁶ And over the last decade, the average number of deaths from floods, droughts, and storms in countries considered “highly vulnerable” was 15 times higher than in places with low vulnerability.

The fact that the people most vulnerable to the climate crisis are the least equipped to adapt to it is both sad and highly concerning. That’s not to say wealthier corners of the world won’t suffer from the pollution they have unleashed on our planet. Extreme heat already devastated Europe more than a month ahead of peak summer temperatures, and last year’s Pacific Northwest heatwave was one of the worst in recent memory.

But the science makes it clear that those sorts of extreme weather events will occur more often in poorer areas like South Asia, where a relentless heatwave earlier this year⁷ killed 90 people, and ongoing flooding has displaced millions of people. These events are a disturbing preview of what’s to come. The amount of money and resources needed to help these areas cope with the climate crisis is significant, but it’s certainly manageable, and the glaring lack of support from wealthier parts of the globe like North America and Western Europe is a deadly choice that will prove devastating for millions of people

We Have The Power To Change

The good news is that some of the losses we’ve inflicted on ourselves are reversible. The science is clear that if we quickly cut emissions, temperatures will stop rising shortly thereafter - likely within a decade or two. Furthermore, the increases in extreme weather events that accompany said temperature rise would be greatly limited. In essence, many of the planet’s major systems are dynamic. Just as we got ourselves into the mess, we can extricate ourselves from it somewhat.

But the scale of emissions cuts and absorption scientists assert are needed will require a rapid transition away from fossil fuels. To have a chance to permanently curb global warming below the critical level of 1.5 degrees Celsius, we need to stop releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

More than anything, as one article discussing the IPCC’s latest findings, said, it “will require a reshuffling of society on a scale unseen in human history. It would be akin to cramming all the medical advances made between penicillin and today’s mRNA vaccines into a few beautiful decades.” Individual countries and alliances have acted forcefully in wartime on these sorts of collective scales to make rapid changes, but the level of global engagement needed to transition away from fossil fuels cannot be understated.

As scary as the facts are, the climate crisis presents a compelling opportunity to reshape some of the worst aspects of modern civilization. Our fossil-powered world creates a lot of undue suffering and death. Air pollution alone kills about nine million people every year, and those deaths are mostly independent of the greenhouse-related warming effect of pollutants like carbon dioxide.

This is a choice that we can and must undo on multiple levels: the supply of fossil fuels is finite, and so is the amount of damage we can induce on ourselves without cataclysmic levels of suffering and disruption to our daily levels. Nonetheless, we are quickly running out of time to avert catastrophic warming scenarios that would disrupt wide swathes of the planet, threatening our ways of life and rendering parts of the planet inhabitable for humans.