A new UN report to guide leaders in their efforts to curb climate change warns the world is going to get sicker, hungrier, poorer and more dangerous in the next 18 years.
President Joe Biden said the United States and other developed nations bear much of the responsibility for climate change during an address at COP26 on Nov. 1, 2021, in Glasgow, Scotland.
Already at least 3.3 billion people's daily lives "are highly vulnerable to climate change" and 15 times more likely to die from extreme weather, the report says. Large numbers of people are being displaced by worsening weather extremes. And the world’s poor are being hit by far the hardest, it says.
The report lists mounting dangers to people, plants, animals, ecosystems and economies, with people at risk in the millions and billions and potential damages in the trillions of dollars. The report highlights people being displaced from homes, places becoming uninhabitable, the number of species dwindling, coral disappearing, ice shrinking and rising and increasingly oxygen-depleted and acidic oceans.
FILE - Huntington Beach firefighter Andrew Merritt battles the Santa Ana wind-driven Bond fire burning near a hillside residence along Santiago Canyon Road in Silverado on Dec. 3, 2020. If warming exceeds a few more tenths of a degree, it could lead to some areas becoming uninhabitable, including some small islands, said report co-author Adelle Thomas of the University of Bahamas and Climate Analytics.
Study authors said much of Africa, parts of Central and South America and South Asia are "hot spots" for the worst harms to people and ecosystems.Climate scientist Pierre Friedlingstein talks with FOX Television Stations' Chris Williams about his report that paints a grim picture for the earth if carbon emissions aren't reduced in 11 years.