The Window to Adapt to Climate Change Is ‘Rapidly Closing,’ Warns the IPCC

After decades of failure to stop emissions rising, a landmark new report released Monday from the United Nations’ climate-science body warns that the impacts of climate change are here and now humans need to accelerate efforts to adapt. “It is unequivocal that climate change has already disrupted human and natural systems,” states the report’s summary for policymakers. The next decade will prove a crucial test of whether the world can move fast enough to implement plans to adapt to this increasingly complex challenge. “Any further delay in concerted anticipatory global action on adaptation and mitigation will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all,” the report says. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The report, produced by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), comes as part of the agency’s most comprehensive assessment on climate change since 2014. It’s the second of three planned reports, the first of which was released in August 2021 and made clear the world was on track to surpass 1.5°C of warming, a threshold widely considered likely to trigger catastrophic and irreversible effects. Typically, policymakers divide climate policy into two categories: adaptation and mitigation. Mitigation incorporates all the actions that can reduce emissions and thus limit future damage, while adaptation covers how we prepare ourselves and ad...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized adaptation climate change Climate Is Everything healthscienceclimate Source Type: news