Despite the renewed commitment of the United States and the increasingly green policies of the European Union, the forecasts of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, headed by the UN) on global warming are not at all reassuring. “Even respecting the +1,5 °C limit established by the Paris Agreements, they will be there dramatic and in some cases irreversible effects, and well before 2050″, writes the agency in its latest report, which updates the one from 2014. Meanwhile, according to the IPCC (which is made up of two United Nations bodies, the World Meteorological Organization and the United for the Environment), the chances that the commitments made by the international community in Paris in 2015 will actually be respected are quite low: “There is a 40% chance that the limit of 1,5 degrees will be exceeded even before the 2025. The worst is yet to come and will have consequences for future generations more than contemporary ones”.
The global average temperature has increased by 1,1 degrees compared to the middle of the last century, and according to the IPCC "it is already too late for some animal and plant species", that is, even if humanity were to be able to contain a further increase, living conditions have already changed to the point of not guaranteeing survival. The most alarming novelty of the report concerns the risks to the life of human beings, which would be just as devastating as those for the ecosystem, since they are largely connected to them. For example, about half a billion people depend on the survival of coral reefs. Not to mention all the populations that live close to the Arctic belt, which is warming up at a speed three times higher than the planet average: the probable extinction of many animal species that live closely with the ice could make the sources of livelihood for those communities and cause their disappearance.
“Life on Earth can adapt to climate change by creating new ecosystems. But humanity cannot", writes the 4.000-page report verbatim, which also mentions the dangers for agriculture and fishing, the latter hard hit by the overheating of the oceans, which is even more worrying than that of the atmosphere (and it's partly because of it). And in the event that the increase in temperature exceeds 2 degrees, the scenario would even become apocalyptic, marking according to the IPCC "a point of no return, with effects that would last for centuries" and which would expose billions of people to poverty and famine . With 2C warming, 130 million more people would end up in extreme poverty within 10 years, plus another 80 million by 2050. The Greenland and parts of Antarctica's ice caps would be at risk of melting, which would entail a rise in sea level of 13 meters, of which to make entire coastal cities disappear, where hundreds of millions of people live today. In big cities, 400 million people would not have guaranteed access to water.
And then the heat waves, which we are already seeing now, they would threaten 420 million more people compared to today. "Only Africa would need tens and tens of billions of dollars of aid every year to adapt to these changes", warns the body linked to the UN. “Every fraction of a degree more or less is decisive – continues the report -. To do this, everyone's commitment is needed: institutions, businesses, citizens. We have to radically change our lifestyles and consumption styles”.
