IPCC latest report: A dire warning about the consequences of inaction.

A new scientific report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was released this morning. It comes with a dire warning of the consequences of inaction.

This report is part of the big IPCC´s Sixth Assessment Report cycle, released, or to be released soon, which consists of three components, each focusing on different topics and work on by different working groups of scientists. This is the breakdown of the three reports:

The report from Working Group 2, which is a team made up of more than270 volunteer scientists from 67 countries, took more than 5 years to complete. The drafted and peer-reviewed report documents the vulnerability of socio-economic and natural systems to climate change, negative and positive consequences of climate change, and options for adapting to it.

Co-chair of the IPCC Working Group II, Hans-Otto Pörtner, said, “By restoring degraded ecosystems and effectively and equitably conserving 30 to 50 percent of Earth’s land, freshwater and ocean habitats, society can benefit from nature’s capacity to absorb and store carbon.”

Other factors highlighted as in need of action include growing urbanization, unsustainable use of natural resources, losses and damages from extreme events, and the COVID pandemic.

Climate change is a global problem needing local solutions. The IPCC says that building resilience in underdeveloped nations is already a challenge.

The previous report, the IPCC´s fifth assessment on climate change impacts was released in 2014 and since then extreme weather has become more common, including having the warmest years on record, every year since 2014. In fact, extreme weather events in the 50-year period between 1970-2019 have caused approximately 2 million deaths, with about 91% of them happening in the poorest countries of the world.

In the same 50-year period, climate and weather-related disasters have resulted in more than $3.6 trillion losses globally. The United States has most of the costly global disasters happening in the world, with 7 out of 10 happening in U.S. soil.