Released Monday, the latest report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability—is a doorstop of a publication that few people outside of the climate science and policy world will read. That doesn’t mean its contents aren’t important. While not covering anywhere near the full scope of the sprawling document, this selection of data points gives a sense of the risks that the authors lay out in alarming detail and strategies for reducing them. It all adds up to the stark warning delivered at the end of the report’s introductory summary: Climate change threatens human and planetary health, and the window for us to limit its destruction is “rapidly closing.”
3.3 to 3.6 billion: Number of people globally living in settings that are “highly vulnerable” to climate change
