United States Mission to the United Nations
Office of Press and Public Diplomacy
For Immediate Release
August 9, 2021
Statement by Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield on the Release of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report
Today, the United States and nearly 200 nations stood behind science in approving the first volume of a series of four IPCC reports for its Sixth Assessment. The global consensus on this report underscores that climate change is an urgent threat, which is already affecting nearly every part of the planet.
In America this summer, we once again experienced record-shattering heat, extensive wildfires, and an early hurricane season. We are far from alone. Across the world, people experienced droughts, devastating floods, rising sea levels, disruptions to food systems, and toxic air pollution. We know these conditions can create or exacerbate hunger, poverty, conflict, and instability.
This IPCC report diagnoses the severe nature of the climate change threat: recent changes in the climate system are widespread, rapid, and intensifying. Human influence is to blame. We must make immediate and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emission, or the consequences of climate change will continue to escalate and wreak havoc on our communities.
Climate change is a challenge the world must take on together, which is why President Biden has made it a top priority for the United States to lead the way on raising our global ambition. The international community, the private sector, and each of us individually must accelerate our efforts to protect our planet and counteract this global crisis, for all of us and generations to come.
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