Global Warming Is Outrunning Efforts to Protect Human Life, Scientists Warn
A new UN report says countries must do more to safeguard billions from floods, droughts and other “compounding” hazards.
Shepherds direct livestock away from an advancing wildfire in Turkey in August.
Photographer: Yasin Akgul/AFP/Getty Images
The breakneck speed of global warming exceeds the pace of efforts to protect billions of vulnerable people, according to a new report released Monday by the world’s top climate scientists. The report warns of a growing mismatch between rising temperatures and slow, fragmented efforts to adapt, leaving little time for catching up before “a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity” is sealed shut.
“With fact upon fact, this report reveals how people and the planet are getting clobbered by climate change,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres, calling the 3,500-page document “an atlas of human suffering” and an indictment of a “criminal” “abdication of leadership.” To underscore the challenges to global cooperation, Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine will likely overshadow the first major report in nearly eight years on climate vulnerability.