'Limiting Climate Change A Priority': New IPCC Report Warns Of Catastrophic Climate Change

The town of Greenville in California just burned to the ground, like the town of Paradise a few years before it. Smoke has been billowing throughout northern California, making it unsafe for many to be outside.

Although not exclusively due to climate change, a warmer climate that has blanketed the world is leading to runaway wildfires — in addition to droughts, floods and sea-levels rise — making conditions difficult for some and perilous for others.

What Happened: All this news comes amidst the release of the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which states that in 2019 carbon dioxide concentration was higher in comparison with any other time in the last two million years.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the report a “code red for humanity.”

Why It Matters: The sixth assessment to be released by a team of climate scientists from around the world is more nuanced than those prior as it explains in detail that the scale of climate change has expanded and is speeding up more quickly than previously thought.

In short, catastrophic climatic events caused by humans are growing in severity due to the production and distribution of coal, oil and gas.

The report anticipates the continuation in “frequency and intensity of hot extremes, marine heatwaves, and heavy precipitation, agricultural and ecological droughts in some regions, and proportion of intense tropical cyclones, as well as reductions in Arctic Sea ice, snow cover and permafrost.”

The consequences of the pressures we’re putting on the climate vary by region. Some nations, mostly those aligned in the equatorial region, are becoming drier while other areas around the globe are getting wetter, like the northern and northeastern U.S.

Scott Barret, a professor of Natural Resource Economics at Columbia University found the report both impressive for its precision and disturbing because of its dire estimates.

“If we take action, we can limit the changes,” he wrote in an email. “But we can't return to the climate that existed even a generation previously.”

What Else: Not everyone may be hurt by the immediate effects of climate change, as some in the agriculture sector are finding opportunities in northern American states, as many western and southern parts of the country become too hot to grow crops with the same regularity. The United States and some partner countries are trying to increase research investment around innovative approaches to agriculture in the wake of severe climate changes.

With regards to the macroeconomy, elevated annual temperatures seem to be particularly hampering low-latitude, low-income economies, thus expanding global inequality, according to a February study published in Nature.

In the United States and around the globe, long-term investments are necessary, said Barret, in order to achieve positive economic returns and maintain a semblance of stability.

“Every investment we make entails a short-term sacrifice and the expectation of a long-term gain,” he wrote. “Addressing climate change is no different. If we want our children and their children's children to be better off, we should make limiting climate change a priority.”