That’s not hyperbole. It is the robust consensus of the international scientific community.
In 2018, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released an urgent report warning that we have roughly 12 years to drastically curb carbon emissions before global temperatures reach 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels. Additional warming past 2 degrees C could cause sea levels to rise several meters, inundating most of the world’s highly-populated coastal cities.
Alarmingly, the world is on track for even higher temperatures, risking cataclysmic interruptions of the ecological systems on which humanity sustains itself. Threats to freshwater access, agriculture and marine fisheries would jeopardize billions of human lives.