After Dire U.N. Warning On Climate, Will Anything Change?
Consider This from NPR
NPR
4.2 • 6.2K Ratings
🗓️ 12 August 2021
⏱️ 15 minutes
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Summary
"The irreversibility" of some of the most catastrophic effects of global warming, he tells Audie Cornish. Kerry, the U.S. Special Envoy for Climate, tells NPR the U.N. report underscored the need for the world to respond more forcefully to climate change — and he's called an upcoming U.N. climate summit in Scotland the "last best hope" for global action.
At the same time, the Biden administration faces an uphill battle to take major action on climate at home. Hear more on that from the NPR Politics Podcast via Apple, Spotify, or Google.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | So is it hot where you are? |
| 0:02.6 | Odds are the answer is yes. |
| 0:04.8 | Yeah, guys, we're talking literally coast to coast. |
| 0:07.0 | Temperature's going to be in the triple digits for parts of the Pacific Northwest into |
| 0:10.6 | Northern California. |
| 0:12.2 | Then we go into the mid plains into the Northeast. |
| 0:14.7 | Heat indexes up to 110 points this week, nearly 200 million Americans were under heat |
| 0:20.0 | advisories or excessive heat warnings. |
| 0:22.8 | Look at these heat indexes. |
| 0:24.2 | Cincinnati today, 101 11 in St. Louis and Memphis, Sri for 106 triple digits. |
| 0:29.9 | For Charlotte, Nashville, on into Little Rock, even in New York and Washington, DC. |
| 0:35.5 | Now the weather will eventually change. |
| 0:37.2 | New cycles will shift to the next thing. |
| 0:39.8 | But what won't change is the stark reality outlined in this week's landmark report from |
| 0:44.5 | the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. |
| 0:47.8 | That's the IPCC. |
| 0:49.8 | It warned that extreme heat and weather are intensifying and that some of the worst |
| 0:53.8 | effects of human cause climate change are on the brink of becoming irreversible. |
| 0:58.2 | I talked with one of the scientists who contributes this effort and what disturbs me the most, |
| 1:03.8 | he said, is the irreversibility that you can't turn it around now. |
| 1:09.0 | At least not all of it, but it's John Kerry's job to try. |
| 1:13.4 | Kerry is president Biden's special envoy on climate, falls to him to work with other |
... |
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