Climate Change Red Lines Closer Than Expected, Says New Report

Since the start of the new millennium, mankind has been warned about climate change and its implications. Yet another scary report now warns that climate change can lead to mid-term existential threat to human civilization.

However, governments around the world have not taken this seriously and continue to add to the warming of the Earth ’s atmosphere with green house gases.

According to the policy paper, "Existential climate-related security risk: A scenario approach" by the Australia-based Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration, the risks of climate change are actually much worse than imagined. The paper says that the current climate crisis is "much larger and more complex than any humans have ever dealt with before."

The paper says that climate change intersects with pre-existing national security risks to function as a threat multiplier and accelerant to instability. It contributes to escalating cycles of humanitarian and socio-political crises, conflicts and forced migration.

“Climate change impacts on food and water systems, declining crop yields and rising food prices driven by drought, wildfire and harvest failures have already become catalysts for social breakdown and conflict across the Middle East, the Maghreb and the Sahel,” it said, adding it has also played a role in the European migration crisis.

The paper brings forth an example from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which projected that warming would continue at the current rate of 0.2 degree Celsius per decade and reach the 1.5 degree Celsius mark around 2040. "However, the 1.5 degree Celsius boundary is likely to be passed in half that time, around 2030 and the 2 degree Celsius boundary around 2045 due to accelerating anthropogenic emissions, decreased aerosol loading and changing ocean circulation conditions,” it warned.

The report said the existential risk to civilization, which poses permanent large negative consequences to humanity, may never be undone. It can either annihilate intelligent life or permanently curtail its potential. “An existential threat may also exist for many peoples and regions at a significantly lower level of warming,” it said.

Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, the Emeritus Director of the Potsdam Institute warns that climate change is now reaching the end-game. He said that very soon, humanity must choose between taking unprecedented action or accepting that it has been left too late and bear the consequences.

The study also provides a solution through scenario planning that it can overcome obstacles. “But provided it is used to explore the unprecedented possibilities and not simply act as a type of conventional sensitivity analysis,” it said.