By David Callaway, Callaway Climate Insights
It’s somewhat frustrating to talk about the dangers of climate change when a madman is holding a nuclear weapon to the world’s head, but some of the private corporate responses we’ve seen in the last 24 hours to Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine give a sense of what can be accomplished when the world is united on something.
The United Nations climate report this morning warning of a dramatic upheaval in global warming impacts in the next 30 years held its own in the news cycle as it painted a picture of a world that in many of our lifetimes will look very little like it does today. Rising seas, wildfires and extreme heat will render large parts of the world uninhabitable, particularly in Africa and Asia, and triggering the greatest human migration in history, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said.
We’re getting a taste of migrations in the last 72 hours, with the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine causing more than a half million people to flee for Poland and other adjacent nations, and reportedly up to two million more behind them waiting to get out. While the situation in Ukraine is the most pressing priority in the world today, our global response is a sure sign of what can be done in the face of the certain disasters to come.
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