The very well respected UN appointed IPCC has come out with its 5th report in 20 years and now says that they are 95% certain that humans are causing global warming up from 90% in the last report released in 2007. Most scenarios presented in the report forecast sharp increase in global temperatures leading to major climatic disasters in all countries. The poor countries are going to be hurt the most from climate change with coastal cities and islands being inundated with increasing sea levels. Food crisis is going to become more common and weather events more catastrophic. The worst case scenario envisages a 5-9 degrees Centigrade increase in average global temperature by 2100, which would make most of earths’ region uninhabitable.
Global warming skeptics are going to dismiss the report again citing the probabilities and uncertainties in the report. Note forecasting climate change is extremely complex but the massive body of evidence and analysis in the last 20 years clearly point out to a huge problem. However, governments in their short sighted narrow agendas are failing their citizens by not agreeing to a global climate change accord. It is clear that the costs will be huge unless urgent action is taken. As it is, we are missing most of the deadlines before which catastrophic change becomes inevitable. Unbridled capitalism in most countries have already led to large inequalities and conspicuous consumption by the “1% elite”. This is not clearly sustainable but governments are composed of the very elite who cannot see the self destruction they are causing.