Humanity stands on the brink of irreversibly damaging the planet if steps are not taken to stop global temperatures from rising. David Wallace-Wells, the deputy editor of New York Magazine and author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming, fears not enough is being done to avert this danger. From the widespread destruction of farmland and forests to an increase in the number of worldwide refugees and number of wars, Mr Wallace-Wells believes climate change will affect everyone. A major danger is the effect global warming will have on the world’s economy – estimates suggest the cost of fighting climate change will cost more than humanity could ever afford to pay.
Mr Wallace-Wells told Express.co.uk “The sort of path that we’re on now, which is about 4C of warming by the end of this century, that is things don’t have to get much worse than they already are to continue as they are, is now so horrific that it would qualify by anyone’s casual standard as a worst-case scenario.
“So that means we’re going to have estimates as high as $600trillion in damage from climate impact – that’s more than twice all the wealth that is in the world today.
“It will mean that the ice sheets will be irreversibly melting. That will take a couple of centuries but over time could bring as much as 60m or 80m of sea level rise, which will flood all the major coastal cities of the world and much of the inland territory beyond that.”
The rise in sea levels could force anywhere between 100 million and one billion climate refugees from their homes and into those parts of the globe spared from flooding.
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This is the world, Mr Wallace-Wells said, we are all headed towards if the appropriate steps are not taken to prevent this.
Scientists now fear global temperatures are well on their way to spike by 4.3C by the end of the century.
Global warming on this scale will flood the world’s coasts, displace countless millions and leave vast swathes of the world scorching and uninhabitable.
A United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on the effects of climate change has urged leaders to consider these warning signs and take action.
In its October 2018 update, the IPCC said it is crucial to keep global temperatures from rising above 1.5C year-on-year.
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However, Mr Wallace-Wells is doubtful temperatures can be stopped from rising above 2C. The real challenge is combating further unchecked warming.
He said: “We’re not in the trouble we’re in now because of what happened 50 years ago and certainly not 200 years ago.
“More than half of all the emissions that have been put into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels have come in the last 25 years.
“The fact we’re at a crisis point right now is entirely because of what the world has done in recent memory and going forward, that dynamic is still going to be the case.
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“So no matter how bad it gets at any point in the future, it will always be the case that we can still avert more damage by producing less carbon emissions or we could produce more damage and suffering by producing carbon emissions.”
And Mr Wallace-Wells fears conventional methods of combating CO2 levels are simply not good enough to match the UN’s climate targets.
He said: “We could get to 2.5C, or 3C or 4C this century. Over the next few centuries, we could get as high as 6C or 7C or 8C of warming this century, in theory.
“So it’s both too late in the sense that we don’t have time to avert 2C warming but also it will never be too late to in the sense that it will always be up to us how much of a climate warming increase we get.”
The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming, published by Penguin Books, is out on February 19.