A critical United Nations report has warned on Monday that time to ensure a “liveable future” for the human race was running out, warning that far worse consequences were due to come.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said that extinctions, ecosystem collapses, disease, heatwaves and megastorms, water and food shortages were all expected to get worse in the future due to rising temperatures.
The panel warned that the world would see these disasters get worse even if fossil fuel emissions were rapidly reduced.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the report a “damning indictment” of failed world leadership.
Moreover, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that world needed to urgently pursue ambitious climate action.
The report also stressed that restoring degraded forests and oceans was crucial for taming climate change. It added that more than a billion people living in coastal regions would be at risk of storm surges by rising seas by 2050.
It added that nearly 410 million people would be affected by water scarcity caused by severe drought at 2°C of warming and that up to 80 million people would be at risk of famine by 2050.
