Climate change report urges leaders to act

A new 175-page report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), part of the United Nations, warns of serious consequences to the planet if nothing is done to prevent climate change.

The report cites food shortages, refugee crises, flooding, mass extinction of plants and animals and dangerously high temperatures as the effects of global warming at its current pace. The panel also warns that dying forests, melting of ice worldwide, rising sea levels and devastating heat would come if emissions continued on their current pace. This report put an added emphasis on probable food supply shortages, which would lead to a variety of humanitarian problems.

The intergovernmental panel that published this report was originally created to research the causes and effects of global warming and climate change and issue statements accordingly, as well as problems and potential solutions. The group was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

The report itself is the fifth and final report published from the IPCC, and it is more severe in its language than ever before. The first report was produced in 1990, and each successive report has had stronger warnings about the dire consequences of global warming. This paper was the result of a five-year effort to analyze scientific papers written on global warming.

According to the report, prevention of catastrophic consequences can only occur if nations limit additional emissions significantly to about one trillion tons. This would lead to an increase in global temperature of about only two degrees Celsius compared to preindustrial levels. If nothing is done at this point, there is a very small chance according to the report that the effects of global warming can be alleviated.

Currently, there is little effort to prevent any of this. According to the IPCC, almost $1.2 trillion is spent on the production of fuel extracted from fossil fuels every year, compared to the mere $400 billion spent to reduce emissions. The panel warns that catastrophic consequences are to come if action is not taken.

At the moment, there is little discussion in the international community about what to do. Some countries have an agreement, albeit a weak one, to let each country decide how to limit their emissions. This would not be enacted until 2020.

The panel states that countries must agree to enact strict international limits on emissions immediately. The president’s science adviser John P. Holdren called the report a wake-up call and said that we must act quickly to prevent disaster in the future. However, resistance exists in congress that prevents the Obama administration from enacting new emission limits at the moment.

The U.N. Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, has said about the report that there is no ambiguity in the message and that time is not on our side. He called for national leaders to start acting immediately.

The report comes only one month before a meeting between international delegates. They will meet in Lima, Peru in an attempt to come to an agreement on how to prevent future climate change.