???????? Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability

What’s Going On Here?

The report formally known as “Working Group II contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report” has been published. Catchy eh? 

It’s the latest update from the international authority on climate change – the United Nations (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

What Does This Mean? 

This is the sixth release of the IPCC’s much venerated assessment report – the first was published in 1990. Last year the first volume of the report was released, which was a review of the latest climate change science. Volume two, the one with the same catchy title as this piece, has just been released and we expect the third volume, which deals with climate change mitigation, to be published later in 2022.

Unfortunately (and perhaps, rather unsurprisingly) the IPCC’s assessment of the impact of climate change isn’t all rainbows and unicorns. Below is the closing paragraph from the high-level summary:

The cumulative scientific evidence is unequivocal: Climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health. 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 liveable and sustainable future for all. 

Why Should We Care? 

Although the report makes hard reading all is not lost. There is hope! UN Secretary-General António Guterres summed it up succinctly – “If we combine forces now, we can avert climate catastrophe.”. 

We absolutely can and should all be looking to minimise our own personal impact (every tenth or hundredth of a degree celsius temperature change will be important!) but Mr Guterres was also brutally direct about where the blame lies – the world’s biggest polluters are guilty of arson of our only home. And the biggest injustice? That those least responsible for the mess are most likely to bear the brunt of the effects.

The message is clear. We need transformative institutional level change at this time now more than ever. And how do we get that? By campaigning, spreading the message, changing hearts and minds, and applying pressure to those in power. Become an activist in any way you can!

Be Curious

Checkout the report summary Jess Kleczka (of curious.earth family fame!) has done on instagram. 

Take the first step to being an activist – share and amplify Jess’s, and others’, campaign material on your social media.

Read about climate injustice on curious.earth!

*Featured image credit – Dominic Alves.