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Rising temperatures are strengthening the destructive force of wildfires, hurricanes and floods, putting tens of millions of Americans at risk. Tens of thousands of Americans are already paying a high price, their lives shattered by climate calamities. Here are twenty-one of their stories. (InsideClimateNews)

The world has squandered so much time mustering the action necessary to combat climate change that rapid, unprecedented cuts in GHG emissions offer the only hope of averting an ever-intensifying cascade of consequences, according to new findings from the United Nations. Already, the past year has brought devastating hurricanes, relentless wildfires and crippling heat waves, prompting millions of protesters to take to the streets. Global temperatures are on pace to rise as much as 3.2 C (5.8 F) by the end of the century, according to the United Nations’ annual “emissions gap” report, which assesses the difference between the world’s current path and the changes needed to meet the goals of the 2015 Paris climate accord. Should that pace continue, the result could be widespread, catastrophic effects: Coral reefs, already dying in some places, would probably dissolve in increasingly acidic oceans. Some coastal cities, already wrestling with flooding, would be constantly inundated by rising seas. In much of the world, severe heat, already intense, could become unbearable. Global GHGs must begin falling by 7.6 percent each year beginning 2020 — a rate currently nowhere in sight — to meet the most ambitious aims of the Paris climate accord. Its authors acknowledged that the findings are “bleak.” (Washington Post, Vox, Guardian)

Scientists predict we’ve got about 11 years to vastly reduce global emissions before we’re, in a word, screwed. That would require governments to dramatically restructure their economies. So where does that leave everyday people doing their best to recycle? A city in Sweden claims to have an answer. They claim to be the “most sustainable city in the world.” GQ sent novelist Reif Larsen to find out what we can learn from the good people of Gothenburg. (GQ)

The world may already have crossed a series of climate tipping points, according to a stark warning from scientists. This risk is “an existential threat to civilisation”, they say, meaning “we are in a state of planetary emergency”. The researchers, writing in a commentary article in the journal Nature, acknowledge that the complex science of tipping points means great uncertainty remains. But they say the potential damage from the tipping points is so big and the time to act so short, that “to err on the side of danger is not a responsible option”. The Nature article lists nine tipping points that may have been surpassed, such as the rapid loss of ice sheets and permafrost, the slowing of the Atlantic Gulf Stream, and wildfires. (Guardian)

Within a few days of the Camp Fire, Chico added over 19,000 new residents—a 20% increase in population. The city has since struggled to accommodate this growth, as officials believe that most new residents are there to stay. Water flowing from toilets through the pollution control plants was up by one million gallons per day, the equivalent of building an additional 5,000 homes overnight. Waste haulers similarly reported that the volume of trash had spiked. Chico needs close to $500 million to improve infrastructure, hire new police officers and firefighters, and expand city services. The additional toilet flushes alone are costing an extra $53,000 per month. The city has asked FEMA and the California Office of Emergency Services for help, but has largely been rebuffed because Chico is not in the fire recovery zone. (Chico)

Virginia Beach last year became one of a small but growing number of communities willing to say no to developers when it rejected a proposal to build homes on flood-prone land. Local officials around the country are forced to grapple with more intense flooding, hurricanes, wildfires and other disasters. That pressure is colliding with development, which provides jobs, homes and taxes but which also can increase the future risk of disaster. In many coastal states, homes are going up at the fastest rate in the most flood-prone areas. New houses in the wildland-urban interface increased 41 percent nationwide between 1990 and 2010. But as the financial and emotional costs of disasters increase, so does the evidence of a shifting mind-set. (NYT)

Coalmines are belching millions of tonnes of methane into the atmosphere unchecked, because policymakers have overlooked the rising climate threat. The International Energy Agency estimated that the amount of methane seeping from new and disused coalmines may have reached just under 40m tonnes last year. This would put annual coalmine emissions broadly in line with the international aviation and shipping sectors combined. The research may help to explain the unexpected surge in methane emissions in recent years. (Guardian)

The concentration of climate-heating GHGs has hit a record high, according to a report from the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The jumps in the key gases measured in 2018 were all above the average for the last decade, showing action on the climate emergency to date is having no effect in the atmosphere. The WMO said the gap between targets and reality were both “glaring and growing”. The rise in GHG concentration follows inevitably from the continued surge in global emissions, which was described as “brutal news” for 2018. (Guardian)

The Lancet Countdown is an international, multidisciplinary collaboration, dedicated to monitoring the evolving health profile of climate change through 41 indicators. The 2019 report finds that a child born today will experience a world that is more than four degrees warmer than the pre­industrial average, with climate change impacting human health from infancy and adolescence to adulthood and old age. Later in life, families and livelihoods are put at risk from increases in the frequency and severity of extreme weather conditions, with women among the most vulnerable across a range of social and cultural contexts. Globally, 77% of countries experienced an increase in daily population exposure to wildfires from 2001–14 to 2015–18. A business as usual trajectory will result in a fundamentally altered world, with the indicators described providing a glimpse of the implications of this pathway. The life of every child born today will be profoundly affected by climate change. Without accelerated intervention, this new era will come to define the health of people at every stage of their lives. (Lancet)