- If we don’t act now, the Earth could warm enough to leave major cities underwater.
- “We have the knowledge and the technology to get this done,” experts concur. But politics gets in the way.
- These UN reports are considered the most authoritative assessments of the state of global warming.
This week’s United Nations climate report painted an ominous picture. If humanity doesn’t act now to stop greenhouse gas emissions, the Earth could warm as much as 3 degrees Celsius.
At those temperatures, major cities will be underwater, unprecedented heatwaves will define summers, terrifying storms will become more frequent and millions of plant and animal species will go extinct, UN leadership warned.
Making the shift seems daunting. A dozen years ago, moving to fully carbon-neutral energy would have been crushingly expensive. But today, with wind power 72% cheaper and solar 90% cheaper than in 2009, officials say it’s actually well within reach.
“We have the knowledge and the technology to get this done,” said Inger Anderson, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme.
Fixing climate change is no longer a technological or scientific problem, said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles — it’s a political one.
“We can solve this problem, we’re just choosing not to,” he said, comparing the situation to a train speeding down a hill with dangerous curves ahead. “The engineer has perfectly functional brakes that work…
