The 2020 Lancet Countdown Report Is Published & the UN's Secretary General Provides His "State of the Planet" Assessment (December 6th)

This past Thursday, Lancet published its annual "Countdown" report (its fifth).  Listeners are well aware I've interviewed contributing authors of this report over the past few years.  The 42-page report is at: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)32290-X/fulltext. 

Among other things the report finds, all health effect domains the report measures are worsening, e.g., "vulnerable populations were exposed to an additional 475 million heatwave events globally in 2019," "during the past 20 years there has been a 53.7% increase in heat-related mortality in people older than 65 years," "the global response to climate change has been muted and national efforts continue to fall short," "carbon intensity of the global energy system has remains almost flat over 30 years, with global coal use increasing by 74% during this time," (and has increased over the past two consecutive years) and "the world has already warmed by more than 1.2C compared to preindustrial levels, resulting in profound, immediate, and rapidly worsening health effects." 

Last Wednesday, the the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, gave a candid "State of the Planet" assessment at Columbia University.  Among other things he stated, "the state of the planet is broken," "humanity is waging war on nature," "biodiversity is collapsing," and "ecosystems are disappearing."  The speech is at: https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/sgspeech-the-state-of-planet.pdf.

Reading both is highly recommended.