New U.N. Report on Devastating Climate Risks
1. Written by 270 researchers from 67 countries, the newest report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of experts convened by the United Nations, finds that our Earth is being irreversibly damaged as rapidly increasing climate change (global warming) ravages cities, farms, and coastlines with record droughts and floods, fires, famine, disappearing species, and rising seas. Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, The Nature Conservancy's new chief scientist, describes this as global weirding, in which small changes in the average temperature of the planet affect our food production, our water quality and supply, the safety of our homes and even our health. You can learn more about the latest news in science as well as interviews with experts across a variety of disciplines by finding more than l00 archived episodes of The Union of Concerned Scientists podcasts at www.ucsusa.org/resources/podcasts.
2. In its most recent and detailed look yet at the threats posed by global warming, the new U.N. report on climate change warns that hundreds of millions of people globally will struggle against floods, water scarcity from severe drought, the spread of diseases like dengue and malaria, and crop failures in places like Africa and Asia. The E.U.'s top climate official, Frans Timmermans, fears that "humans will fight with other humans for water and food," and will flee their homes, creating massive dislocations on a global scale. In the U.S., economic insecurity affects disproportionately low-income communities and communities of color, the very persons least responsible for climate change, but climate solutions could also benefit those very communities. These include efforts to develop clean energy, to restore ecosystems and to build climate resilience and adaptation in urban centers.
3. According to the newest report from the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, global temperatures have already increased by an average of 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) since the 19th century. As humans have pumped heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere by burning coal, oil and gas for energy, and cutting down forests for farmland and charcoal, many of the world's leaders have vowed to limit total global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. Achieving that goal would require nations to all but eliminate their fossil-fuel emissions by 2050, a goal that would be fought by dominant economic interests. According to research published in the Annual Review of Environment and Resources, a main agent of change may be building waves of grassroots movements, such as the recently created German citizens' climate council, in which 160 citizens were chosen in a weighted lottery to represent the demographics of the nation where citizens' voices, not lobbyists, are speaking. There is no counterpart to this in the U.S., but our Citizens' Climate Lobby and other grassroots groups are helping to influence climate policy.
4. The disclosure of the risks facing businesses, consumers, and our financial systems due to ignoring the economic as well as the human costs of climate change is also important to the larger public, which relies on these companies to manage our savings, investments, pension funds, future energy choices, and other long-term portfolios. Research by The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS Climate and Energy Program) finds that across the nation, climate-related events have already racked up billions of dollars in economic losses. As wildfires have intensified, annual federal firefighting costs rose to $2.2 billion in 2020, with rising seas, diminishing snowpack, wildfires, and drought significantly affecting the traditional subsistence activities, livelihoods, and sacred cultural resources of Indigenous peoples, some of whom have already been forced to relocate. In the face of all of this, The Nature Conservancy urges us to: 1) cut our carbon emissions as much and as soon as possible; 2) build resilience to the impacts we can no longer avoid; and 3) "conserve the lands and waters on which all life depends."

Laura Raedeke
EcoFaith Network NE MN Team
Lutheran Church of the Cross, Nisswa, MN
Northeastern Minnesota Synod