Consider This from NPR - 'A Code Red For Humanity:' Climate Change Is Getting Worse — Faster Than We Thought

Episode Date: August 9, 2021

A landmark new report from the United Nations warns that the world is running out of time to avoid the catastrophic effects of global warming. Those effects are already becoming clear as extreme weather, drought, and fire become more common. One of the latest examples: wildfires are raging amid a record heat wave in Turkey, Lebanon, Italy and Greece. Durrie Bouscaren reports for NPR from Istanbul. And, as NPR's Jeff Brady reports, climate change is also changing lives in subtler ways. Other reporting heard in this episode came from NPR's Rebecca Hersher, who's been covering the new U.N. report on climate change. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography. Kauffman.org Over the weekend, California's Dixie wildfire became the second largest in the state's history, charring almost half a million acres. Despite the efforts of thousands of firefighters, California's wildfires have turned hundreds of homes to rubble and ash. That fire in Northern California is why at one point over the weekend,

the city with the worst air quality of any in the world was Denver. Here's a live look outside of the incredibly smoky and hazy sky in the metro area. It smells like a bonfire when you walk outside. Meanwhile, in Nebraska, a group of friends rescued from a flooded elevator during the overwhelming flash floods this weekend. A few people had to be pulled from neck-deep water in an elevator in downtown Omaha, where homes and businesses were flooded after a torrential rain on Saturday. Streets completely unrecognizable as cars were floating down lanes and people were left stranded. Now on any given day, you can find stories like this from all over the world, and they're becoming more frequent. That's one major takeaway from a new landmark report issued by the UN on Monday.

It found human-caused climate change is leading to more and more extreme weather events. And it's accelerating faster than we thought. Those are the things that people in the U.S. are already observing in their own backyards. Wildfires in the West, the flooding that we see in the Midwest and the Northeast, the damage from hurricanes in the South. Alison Crimmins is the director of the National Climate Assessment at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. She spoke to NPR Monday about the new U.N. report. The overall message is that, you know, climate change isn't something that's happening far away to someone else in some far off future time. It's really happening here and now.

Consider this. We knew climate change was happening. Now we have new information about how fast and each day the consequences are becoming clear. From NPR, I'm Adi Kornish. It's Monday, August 9th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate

with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today, or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. I'm Peter Sagal, host of NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. and you too can finally see what our real live legs look like. Legs! Remember those? It's Consider This from NPR. The Secretary General of the UN called this week's new report a code red for humanity. The report's authors, nearly 200 leading climate scientists, say the world is running out of time to prevent catastrophic global warming this century.

One of the scientists is Amanda Maycock. We can now link more concretely many of the extreme events that we're observing around the world, so extreme heatwave events, extreme rainfall events, to the warming that's occurred and to human-induced climate change. Maycock directs the Climate Institute at the University of Leeds and was also one of the authors of the new report. And that report is the work of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a hugely influential group that defines scientific consensus. And that paper we're talking about today, well, it's part of their first big

report in eight years, aggregated findings from 14,000 pages of scientific studies. Yeah, that's a really important statistic is that we've assessed a huge body of literature here to come up with the findings that are presented in the report. Speaking to NPR on Monday, Maycock outlined key takeaways. She said human influence on extreme weather events has increased in recent years. She said scientists have gotten better and more confident about linking specific weather events to climate change. And she said it now looks like the global temperature will increase by a crucial benchmark of 1.5 degrees Celsius sooner than previously thought. Now, what we've shown in this report published today is that in a number of different scenarios

for possible future emissions trajectories that we could take as a planet, the 1.5 degree Celsius temperature target is likely to be reached or exceeded in the next 20 years. 1.5 degrees Celsius is an important number. It's the target scientists say we need to stay under to avoid most catastrophic and long-term effects of climate change. Those include massive flooding, severe drought,

and runaway ocean warming that fuels tropical storms and drives mass die-offs of marine species. Maycock said, even if we reach that 1.5 degree threshold, it's not impossible to turn things around. But in order to do that would require very rapid, large-scale reductions, reaching this target of net zero emissions by around the middle of the century. Net zero emissions in the next 30 years? Well, the world is not on pace to do that.

While the Biden administration has promised to cut emissions in half this decade, it's unclear how they will achieve that goal. And other major carbon emitters, China, India, well, they're not prepared for. This past week, it happened in the Mediterranean, where thousands of people had to be evacuated from a Greek island by boat after a wildfire cut off other means of escape. And the footage looks downright apocalyptic. It's night, it's dark, the boat is surrounded by a coast of bright flaming forest on three sides. Italy, Lebanon and Turkey are also dealing with wildfires amid a record heat wave. And in some of Turkey's coastal forests, people have been left to fight fires on their own.

Duri Buskerin reports from Istanbul. When Engin Beşol and his neighbors saw smoke rising behind their village, they rushed to the forest. Everybody understood that if they cannot stop it, it's going to connect with the big fire in Mazu village. It was still small, so Bashol started cutting down fresh olive branches to try and smother the fire. Instead, he says, the flames exploded to the size of a large house. It got the size of the villa in like 10 seconds or 15 seconds, you know what I mean? They used tractors to pull in the water tanks that are usually used in their gardens. After a half hour, Bashol and 250 volunteers were able to save Itrim,

a small mountain town known for its traditional carpets. But all around them are the blackened hillsides of the Turkish Riviera, once a global tourist draw, now a desolate landscape. Turkish social media is full of images of residents fighting fires on their own, taking care of injured wildlife, and sleeping in the open, all against a smoke-filled sky. In this video by photographer Mustafa Seven, volunteers in surgical masks try to stop a fire from overtaking a mountain road with a single hose. Over a week of high winds and temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit,

the fires quickly became the worst in Turkey's recorded history. In just 10 days, they burned an area three times the size of what typically burns in an average year. And the damage keeps growing. As climate change lengthens droughts and pushes temperatures even higher, these disasters are likely to become more and more common. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government has pledged assistance and rebuilding efforts for those affected by the fire. Some are now living in camps. But the government's lack of preparedness, despite fires being a common problem in the South, has stoked anger, explains Sinem Adar,

a Turkish political expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. It's like the disrespect of the current government towards its own citizens has become very apparent. In recent years, Erdogan's government has cut funding from the agency in charge of firefighting planes, leaving none to respond when the fires broke out. Then, Adar says, officials seemed not to know who was responsible for what, leaving local governments to largely fend for themselves. In general, it's an indication of the inability of the Erdogan's government to govern the country. Erdogan's political opponents are seizing the moment. Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of Turkey's main opposition party, accused the ruling party of incompetence.

You cannot run this country, he says. Duri Biskarin, reporting for NPR from Istanbul. Fires and floods are devastating catastrophes that make themselves felt all at once. For many other people, the real-world effects of climate change are creeping into their lives in smaller, slower ways. It's like smoke under a door. Here's NPR's Jeff Brady on what that's looked like in America this summer. For graduate student A. Carey, summer means traveling from Maryland to the Bahamas to see family for Emancipation Day. The holiday celebrates the end of slavery and includes music, dancing, and a parade. You just hear this thumping drum beat,

like a heartbeat. Coming out of the distance, you hear this gradual brass swelling. Carrie says this video from YouTube is exactly as she remembers the parades. She says saving for and planning this trip each summer is a tradition that's changing. You know, I have to be a lot more aware about when I travel. I have to think about trip insurance.

What's my plan B, plan C of returning to the U.S. if it is hit by a hurricane. And Carrie says there's a lot more talk in the Bahamas about rising water levels and what that will mean for the future. In Tampa, Florida, Sarah Brogan says summers are getting hotter. Going to the beach to cool off is a decades-long tradition for her family. We've been to the beach once this summer. That's because of red tide. These algae blooms are increasing, likely because of

human pollution and warming temperatures. They produce toxins that kill sea life, which is why Brogan is staying away from the beach. A lot of times it's before you even get there, you can smell. The smell of the dead fish is very strong. Health officials say people with breathing problems like asthma should stay clear of red tide areas. Brogan, a registered nurse, says her family doesn't have chronic breathing issues, but it's still uncomfortable. For us, it would be like, you know, just a tickle in the throat. Or all of a sudden, you know, you're having to like clear your throat more or you cough a little bit. Brogan canceled plans to rent a pontoon boat for Father's Day to go fishing.

She still hopes to get to the beach before hurricane season gets intense. On the West Coast, Valerie Christensen says a heat wave interrupted her plans to compete in summer dog shows. Christensen, who lives on Bainbridge Island in Washington State, has three dogs. One of them is a border terrier named Henry, who's won some ribbons this summer. He doesn't like the heat. I don't know any terriers that like the heat. They sort of wilt when it comes to like 75 and above. She canceled plans to attend a June show in Oregon because it was a record 114 degrees. Now she looks for shows in cooler locations and away from wildfire smoke. You know, obviously it's not good for the animal and it's not good for me either

because you spend pretty much a whole weekend, sometimes as many as four days, outside. Climate-fueled wildfires also mean more smoke in special places. Heather Ducos and her husband celebrated their 20th anniversary last month in Montana's Glacier National Park, where they also honeymooned. When we got there, it was very smoky and it was disappointing. We just, you can't see the distant vistas that the park is known for. Ducco is an amateur photographer and the smoke made it difficult to see the awe-inspiring views she remembered. Everything that should have been green and white and blue was very orange and brown.

Duco says for future anniversaries, they may go sooner in the summer, hoping to avoid the worst of fire season. And she knows this is nothing compared to losses from fires and flooding some people have experienced. Still, how she and everyone else navigates a warming world is changing, and people are figuring out how to adapt. NPR's Jeff Brady. And some of what you

heard in this episode came from reporting by NPR's Rebecca Herscher, who's been covering the new UN report. Find more coverage in our episode notes. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Adi Cornish.