A new report warns the Earth is at risk of becoming a "hothouse" if global temperatures continue to rise.
I recently spoke to Johan Rockström, executive director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre and one of the co-authors of the report about our planetary path ahead.
It's a dire future.
"We are already at 1°C warming and are seeing extreme events like droughts, floods, fires," Rockström tells me.
"If we pass 2°C, most indications are we can still adapt.
"But if we reach 3-4°C warming... it would mean a planet that cannot serve the modern world as we recognize it.
"There will be large tracts of arid lands that will be uninhabitable, massive movements of people, difficult producing food, pandemics, no more ice sheets, people moving up into the Polar regions... this would be a different planet entirely."
And yet, Rockström remains hopeful (!!). He says, "the path to success is there" but it will require high-tech innovation, policy rethinks, behavioral change and the transformation of social values.
Can we steer our planet away from a "hothouse" future? There's no choice.
The scientists have sounded the alarm. Now we must take action on ALL fronts...
#earth #earthsystem #hothouse #hothouseearth #globalwarming #PNAS #climatechange #climatescience #nscnn #NewsStream #CNN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugI1GSiB410&t=1s
