In this video by The YEARS Project, climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe provides a quick take on the relevance of the IPCC‘s 2030 goals and our progress towards those goals. She addresses a recurring question, “Is climate change going to kill us all in 10 years?”
This question stems from misunderstandings of the October 8, 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, which lays out how much we need to reduce pollution in order to avoid catastrophic climate change and irreversible damage.
“Is Climate Change Going To Kill Us All In 10 Years?” by The Years Project
The Global Climate Risk Index by the environmental think tank Germanwatch shows that globally in the past 20 years, nearly 500,000 fatalities were directly linked to more than 12,000 extreme weather events. This amounted to approximately $3.54 trillion in economic damages.
The Climate Risk Index shows that climate change has disastrous impacts especially for poor countries, but also causes increasingly severe damages in industrialized countries like Japan or Germany.
–David Eckstein, Germanwatch
Climate Risk Index 2020, table 2018 (C) www.germanwatch.org/en/cri
Impact Especially Tough on Poor Countries
During 1999 to 2018, poor countries faced much higher impacts. Seven of the ten countries most affected are developing countries with low or lower middle income per capita. Puerto Rico, Myanmar, and Haiti were most affected. The Philippines were hit by the most powerful typhoon recorded worldwide in 2018.
Countries like Haiti, Philippines and Pakistan are repeatedly hit by extreme weather events and have no time to fully recover. That underlines the importance of reliable financial support mechanisms for poor countries like these not only in climate change adaptation, but also for dealing with climate-induced loss and damage.
–David Eckstein, Germanwatch
Those who are least responsible for the problem, are the ones who are suffering the most. This is unacceptable.
–Renato Redentor Constantino, Executive Director, Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities (Philippines)
Industrialized Countries Also Impacted
Among industrialized countries, in 2018, Japan and Germany were hit hardest by heat-waves and severe drought.
Heat Waves
Science confirms the link between climate change and the frequency and severity of extreme heat.
Heat waves were one major cause of damage in 2018. Germany, Japan, and India suffered from extended periods of heat. Europe is now up to 100 times more likely than a century ago to experience extreme heat spells. The African continent heatwaves may be under-represented due to a lack of data.
The UN body dealing with climate change has issued a warning saying global food security is at risk if we do not change the way we use the planet’s resources.
In a major report on land use and climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says rising global temperatures are creating more extreme weather events, such as heatwaves and droughts, leading to land degradation and desertification.
At the same time it says poor land-use practices are contributing to global warming.
The destruction of natural habitats to make way for livestock and cultivation, is responsible for about a fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions, and is reducing the land’s capacity to store carbon.
The report’s authors are calling for a shift to sustainable land-use practices, and for action to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions.
While they have stopped short of telling people to stop eating meat they say reducing consumption will take pressure off our planet’s limited natural resources.
