Future of Climate Change

Climate change and global warming are civilizational threats to human existence on Earth and need to be addressed immediately. The impacts of climate change are bound to be widespread, impacting every part of human life and the planet’s functioning. Climate change disbalances global climate systems by altering pressure areas, temperatures and wind patterns which has many knock-on effects for climactic conditions and weather patterns across the world. In this book, we are predicting that global warming will most likely be limited to 1.5 °C with a less than 30% chance of overshooting this target. The warming will continue at 0.1–0.3 °C per decade in the next three decades, with the optimum target being 1 °C. The pathway to 1.5 °C warming is one of net-zero emissions by 2050–2055. This makes it necessary for widespread adoption of clean energy through electricity, much higher adoption of electrical vehicles, massive progress in clean energy technology like storage and transportation and mass adoption of carbon capture and use systems. However, 6% of insects, 8% of plants and 4% of vertebrates are predicted to lose their ecosystems and possibly go extinct or have to evolve rapidly. Large-scale climate migration is quite likely with an estimated 216 million people across the world becoming internal climate migrants. The worst affected regions will be North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and the Pacific.