What You Should Know
Delaying action to address climate change will increase the environmental and societal consequences as well as the costs. The longer we wait to tackle climate change, the harder and more expensive the task will be.
As expected, intensification of droughts, heat waves, floods, wildfires, and severe storms is occurring, with a mounting toll on vulnerable ecosystems and societies. These events are early warning signs of even more devastating damage to come, some of which will be irreversible.
It is very strange that those who would accept the general facts of universal natural resources do not perceive that they are taking away the ground from under the feet of the natural environment.
It is very important to understand the impacts of 1.5°C global warming above pre-industrial levels and related global emission pathways in the context of strengthening the response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty.
The average temperature of the Earth is heading for levels not experienced for millions of years.
Two starkly different futures diverge from this time forward. Society's current path leads to increasingly serious climate-change impacts, including potentially catastrophic changes in climate that will compromise efforts to achieve development objectives where there is poverty and will threaten standards of living where there is affluence.