As a New U.N. Climate Report Gauges [In]Action on Global Warming, Authors Call for Changes in Focus

Meet the world's hardest-working, unpaid and under-appreciated advisors on planetary sustainability

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April 4 marked the release of part three of the first comprehensive international scientific assessment of climate change risks and responses since 2014 by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This largely-volunteer scientific body was constituted under United Nations auspices in 1988, the year global warming became headline news, to periodically advise the world's nations on the latest climate change science, assess impacts on humans and ecosystems and options for cutting vulnerability and slowing warming. (I've been on this ride reporting on this panel since that first year - more than half my life.)

The first part - released last summer and labeled a "code red" warning by the United Nations - was an update on what's known about human-driven global heating. The second charted rising impacts of warming and coastal change and steps to cut vulnerability.

The report from "Working Group Three" focuses on options for slowing warming and stabilizing the amount of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere by cutting emissions or soaking them up.

A rare smiling moment in the process of completing the IPCC Working Group 3 climate report summary (captured by IISD/ENB)

After two weeks of fraught word-by-word Zoom wrangling between dozens of climate experts and diplomats from most of the world's nations, the report's summary for policy makers was approved yesterday. It's posted here.

A live webcast and press briefing explores highlights and kicked off with blunt words from United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres: "Some government and business leaders are saying one thing - but doing another. Simply put, they are lying. And the results will be catastrophic."

Watch and weigh in

I hope you can sift the report summary and watch the Sustain What conversation I had today with four amazing authors. You can watch and share on Facebook Live, LinkedIn, Twitter at my @revkin account or here on YouTube:

Here's a rough Trint transcript.

My guests:

• Leon Clarke, who recently moved from the University of Maryland to direct work on decarbonization pathways at Bezos Earth Fund

• Felix Creutzig, head of the working group on Land Use, Infrastructures and Transport at Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change and chair of sustainability economics at Technische Universität Berlin

• Paulina Jaramillo, professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University

• Karen Seto, an urban and land-change scientist and the Frederick C. Hixon Professor of Geography and Urbanization Science at the Yale School of the Environment

I have profound respect for the tireless ranks of climate scientists and other scholars and experts who spend months balancing their day jobs with unpaid work. The same goes for the IPCC's professional staff managing this monumental process and enduring endless slings and arrows from all sides.

Tomorrow I'll post a summary of the report along with your insights and those revealed through our conversation with the scientists.

Watch

Climate Impacts Report discussion - My February IPCC chat on the adaptation and impacts report

Code Red for Humanity - Now What? - My discussion with top IPCC scientists after the basic science report was released last summer

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