5 things we learned from the EU's big (and first) climate risk report - POLITICO Europe
5 things we learned from the EU’s big (and first) climate risk report - POLITICO
BRUSSELS — Act now or climate change will wreak catastrophic damage on Europe.
That’s the blunt message scientists sent to the European Union’s leaders on Monday in the first-ever report on climate risks facing the bloc from the European Environment Agency (EEA).
The EEA, an EU body conducting independent research to inform policymaking, warned that the bloc is unprepared for the effects of climate change even if the world manages to keep global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as set down in the Paris Agreement.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate science
What began as a theory in the 1890s — that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide could increase global temperatures — had progressed to a scientific fact a century later. Scientists across a range of disciplines are studying the impact of the still-growing concentration of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere as they call for industrial and governmental policies to slow, then halt, the warming of the planet.