The best-case scenario of climate change is that world gets just 2°C hotter, which scientists call the “threshold of catastrophe”.
Why is that the good news? Because if humans don’t change course now, the planet is on a trajectory to reach 4°C at the end of this century, which would bring $600 trillion in global climate damages, double the warfare, and a refugee crisis 100x worse than the Syrian exodus.
David Wallace-Wells explains what would happen at an 8°C and even 13°C increase. These predictions are horrifying, but should not scare us into complacency. “It should make us focus on them more intently,” he says.
David Wallace-Wells is a national fellow at the New America foundation and a columnist and deputy editor at New York magazine. He was previously the deputy editor of The Paris Review. He lives in New York City. His latest book is The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming.