The consequences of catastrophic warming will be political and even military,not just environmentalClimate change is an existential threat to the human race. This may seem an absurd or alarmist statement, since we have been conditioned by unparallelled growth to expect that there are no catastrophes that are insurmountable. Even apocalyptic science fiction deals with bands of survivors who have, or by definition,survived. And we always imagine ourselves as among the survivors. But the threat is genuine. The latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change tells us that there are only a dozen or so years in which to change our economies radically whether we are to keep the effects of the warming already under way to manageable proportions. That would require the countries of the world to live up to the most ambitious of the goals of the Paris climate change agreement, and keep the rise in average global temperatures to 1.5C above preindustrial levels. A rise of even half a degree above that, or to 2C,will have effects that are very much worse. Already this seems much more likely. All corals will disappear, as will many insects and plants.
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Source: theguardian.com