There’s nothing quite as scary as what’s happening to our planet. Here are six terrifying facts that won’t go away once Halloween’s over.
Six things to give us the shivers this Halloween
- Global temperatures are likely to rise 1.5 degrees Celsius in the next 20 years, according to a report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This will cause more heatwaves, wildfires, droughts, floods and extreme weather. And if it rises higher than this, we could reach an irreversible tipping point – where physics takes over and the results are catastrophic.
- 155 million people are going hungry or starving, according to the World Food Programme – due to extreme weather, economic shock and conflict.
- Levels of CO2 are at a 2.5-4.5-million year high. The last time they were this high was during the Pliocene Epoch, when the sea level was a scary 24 meters higher and the average temperature up by almost 4 degrees Celsius.
- The seasons are changing. For example, the ‘first leaf’ date in the UK, heralding the arrival of spring, happened 10 days earlier in 2020 than the average for 2000–09.
- More than 1 million species are at risk of going extinct because of climate change and human activities like deforestation, pollution, development and overfishing. Scientists believe that species are going extinct at almost 1,000 times the natural rate and by 2050, we’ll have lost as much as 30-50% of the earth’s species.
- Earth’s overshoot day is getting earlier. This marks the day in the year where we’ve used up more from the earth that it can renew. In 1971, the overshoot date was December 25. This year, it was a shocking 28 July.
Scary, sobering stuff. Right now, we still – just about – have time. Let’s make it count.