We Must Act Now: WECAN Responds to the Latest IPCC Report

Source: We Must Act Now: WECAN Responds to the Latest IPCC Report

As climate-fueled forest fires, floods, and heat waves decimate communities and ecosystems the world over, the newly released report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), confirms what we already knew, conditions will only get worse.

On August 9, 2021, the IPCC issued a special report that evaluates the scientific knowledge on climate change, shaped by hundreds of scientists who assess evidence from scientific, technical, and socio-economic research and publications. Widely regarded as the most comprehensive and authoritative body of scientific research on climate change to date, the report contains irrefutable evidence to back climate movements across the globe, and builds upon the foundation of the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), which has shaped global climate action and UNFCCC climate negotiations since its release in 2014.

Building on the AR5, the newest report examines the severe impacts climate change is having on our natural world. The newest IPCC report confirms what many of us have been saying for decades, that climate change is unequivocally the result of human action and that it is accelerating far more rapidly and unpredictably than previously thought.

The report assesses outcomes for both 1.5°C and 2°C global warming above pre-industrial levels; the numbers are sobering.

• Globally, extreme heat waves currently occur five times as often as they did historically, and they will hit fourteen times as often if warming reaches 2°C. The frequency of heatwaves is already increasing faster than predicted. Even planetary warming of just 1.5°C will deliver an increasing number of unprecedented extreme events.
• Globally, droughts that used to occur once every 10 years, now occur 70% more frequently. Such droughts will arrive between two and three times as often if warming increases to 2°C.
• Heavy downpours that used to occur once every 10 years now occur 30% more frequently. They will arrive 70% more frequently if warming increases to 2°C.

These are just a few of the severe climate impacts that will occur in the coming years. The report states that global warming is now 1.1 degrees Celsius higher than pre-industrial levels, and we are rapidly hurtling toward 1.5 degrees.

As the world warms, many climate impacts will be irreversible for centuries to come, including rising sea levels and melting ice caps, all of which will change the very nature of our society and planet.

The report also confirms that greenhouse gas emissions have increased unabated since the Paris Climate Agreement. Specifically, the report states that increases in methane emissions, largely caused by fossil fuels and agriculture, are driving global warming and climate change.