The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a UN body, concluded in a report published today (Aug. 9) that carbon-emitting human activity has caused an unprecedented change in climate patterns whose effects are already being felt, are largely irreversible, and will get worse—the only real question is how much worse.
The IPCC has published reports regularly for the past 30 years, but this year’s is unusually frank about the dire situation we find ourselves in, and the failures that have led us here. The authors of the report find that, short of drastic action to reduce or eliminate greenhouse gas emissions in the next few years, “global warming of 1.5°C and 2°C will be exceeded during the 21st century.”
With the COP26 climate summit coming up in Glasgow in November, the IPCC report also assesses for the first time the role of international politics in climate inaction and takes it into account to lay out different scenarios for the future.
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