The chance to secure a livable future for everyone on Earth is slipping away.

That was the dire message from a United Nations report released Monday, the culmination of more than six years of work by thousands of climate scientists contributing to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 

“There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all,” the report’s authors wrote. 

Still, there’s hope. 

The world is approaching a point of no return to combat climate change and prevent irreversible damage caused by global warming, a report released Monday by the United Nations concludes.

The warning from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is reminiscent of past doomsday rhetoric calling for immediate and extreme action that often draws skepticism from critics over the urgency of the problem.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a behemoth report on our warming world—something it has done routinely for three decades. Though the findings have evolved considerably over the years, the news cycle is always strikingly similar: World leaders offer bombastic soundbites, and headlines warn of impending doom. In turn, many people will interpret this report as a stark warning that humans are joy-riding down the highway to hell.

The seven states that rely on water from the shrinking Colorado River are unlikely to agree to voluntarily make deep reductions in their water use, negotiators say, which would force the federal government to impose cuts for the first time in the water supply for 40 million Americans.

Joe McCue thought he had found a desert paradise when he bought one of the new stucco houses sprouting in the granite foothills of Rio Verde, Ariz. There were good schools, mountain views and cactus-spangled hiking trails out the back door.

Then the water got cut off.

A “river” more than 100 miles wide is gushing through the air high above California, bringing with it heavy rain, winds, and snow. It’s the third in a series of weather systems known as atmospheric rivers — long, heavy columns of water vapor in the sky — to hit the state in the last two weeks.

From a small island in Polynesia to the white-sand beaches of Florida, the planet experienced a dizzying number of climate and extreme weather disasters in 2022.

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Drought in California meant Raquel Krach, a rice farmer and graduate student in the Sacramento Valley, planted very little. Using groundwater, she and her husband planted 75 acres this year to maintain their markets. The rest of the 200 acres she typically sows remained empty due to an inadequate water supply.

The 53-year-old Democrat said it’s clear to her that climate change is responsible. But she says that notion is a deeply divisive one in her community.

With planting roughly halfway complete, the 2023 U.S. hard red winter wheat crop is already being hobbled by drought in the heart of the southern Plains, wheat experts said.

Planting plans may be scaled back in the U.S. breadbasket despite historically high prices for this time of year, reflecting rising global demand and thin world wheat supplies projected to end the 2022/23 marketing year at a six-year low. The tight supplies have been exacerbated as the conflict in Ukraine has disrupted grain exports from the Black Sea region.

Drought that stretched across three continents this summer — drying out large parts of Europe, the United States and China — was made 20 times more likely by climate change, according to a new study.

Drought dried up major rivers, destroyed crops, sparked wildfire, threatened aquatic species and led to water restrictions in Europe. It struck places already plagued by drying in the U.S., like the West, but also places where drought is more rare, like the Northeast. China also just had its driest summer in 60 years, leaving its famous Yangtze river half its normal width.