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Climate disasters – Earth is becoming uninhabitable for millions of humans.

An uninhabitable hell’: UN says climate change ‘doubled the rate’ of disasters, SMH, By Olivia Rudgard, October 13, 2020 Climate change is largely responsible for a doubling in the number of natural disasters since 2000, the United Nations said Monday, as it warned that the Earth was becoming uninhabitable for millions of humans.

Three quarters of a billion more people were affected by catastrophic events of nature over the past two decades than in the 20 years before, the UN’s office for disaster risk reduction said.

Calling humanity “wilfully destructive”, it said the data was a wake-up call to governments that had failed to take the threat of climate change seriously or to prepare for more natural disasters.

It is baffling that we willingly and knowingly continue to sow the seeds of our own destruction, despite the science and evidence that we are turning our home into an uninhabitable hell for millions of people,” the authors said.

The report found that there were 7,348 major recorded disaster events between 2000 and 2019, compared with 4,212 between 1980 and 1999.

Climate-related disasters explained the bulk of the rise, increasing from 3,656 to 6,681. Floods and storms were the most common events. The incidence of flooding more than doubled, from 1,389 to 3,254.

Mami Mizutori, the UN’s representative for disaster risk reduction, said that NGOs and emergency services were “fighting an uphill battle against an ever-rising tide of extreme weather events”. She added: “The odds are being stacked against us when we fail to act on science and early warnings to invest in prevention, climate-change adaptation and disaster-risk reduction,” she said.

Asia was the worst-hit continent and China the worst-affected country, followed by the US. Overall, more than 4 billion people were affected by disasters, a rise from 3.25 billion. …….https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/an-uninhabitable-hell-un-says-climate-change-doubled-the-rate-of-disasters-20201013-p564hj.html

October 13, 2020 - Posted by Christina MacPherson | 2 WORLD, climate change