Code Red for Humanity and the Planet
An article for Inter Press Service News By Felix Dodds and Chris Spence republished here. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is absolutely right to call the latest UN climate report a “Code Red for Humanity.” Without immediate and serious action, we are condemning future generations to a dismal future. Already, we have wasted too much time. Next year, it will be half a century since first UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm warned us of the risks to our environment from human activities. More than 30 years have passed since the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued its first report (the latest report is its sixth). Even that first report in 1990 warned of humanity’s impact on greenhouse gas concentrations and planetary warming. Again, our actions over subsequent decades have been woefully inadequate. This year has given us the most vivid insights into what the new world will look like, whether it is droughts and fires...
