Reading the new IPCC report: mitigating climate change

What impacts will climate change have on the future? What do they mean for higher education?

Today we continue our group reading of the new IPCC report, focusing on the Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability document produced by Working Group III. We’ll dive into the “Summary for Policymakers.”

We’ll begin with a summary of the high points, then outline some first implications for higher education, and conclude with questions.

(For more info on this reading, click here. To look back at the previous installments of this series, click here and here.)

This report is broken into four main sections, after an introduction.

Section B: Recent developments and current trends
The biggest trend this report identifies is unsurprising, that greenhouse gas emissions have been rising, including during the 21st century. There have been some positive developments, which slowed the rate of growth, but: “Emissions reductions in CO 2 from fossil fuels and industrial processes, due to improvements in energy intensity of GDP and carbon intensity of energy, have been less than emissions increases from rising global activity levels in industry, energy supply, transport, agriculture and buildings.” Overall, it seems likely we’ll overshoot a 1.5 degree rise by mid-century or…