'We need to keep natural systems in better shape to suck up carbon,' says Camille Parmesan, a UT Austin researcher. 'Emissions reductions alone are not going to be enough.' | via NPR
Portland residents wait inside the Oregon Convention Center, which was repurposed as an emergency cooling center during a heat wave in June 2021. Hundreds of people died in the Pacific Northwest due to the heat wave.Billions of people on every continent are suffering because of climate change, accordingreleased on Monday. And governments must do a better job of protecting the most vulnerable communities while also rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Still, the authors of the report make clear, humans are not powerless. Repairing damaged ecosystems and reducing greenhouse gas emissions dramatically and immediately would spare billions of people from illness, poverty, displacement and death.Some of the most delicate ecosystems have already been irreversibly altered by climate change with serious implications for global warming later this century.
For that reason, protecting natural landscapes far from human settlements is an important way to protect human life and health, too, the report notes. The authors return again and again to the deadly effects of heat waves. Around the world, high temperatures are killing people and making them sick.