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The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) contains strong warnings that failure to prevent global warming from increasing more than 1.5 degrees Celsius will result in inevitable increases in climate hazards. The Working Group II report is the second installment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report. It assesses the impacts, adaptation capabilities, and vulnerabilities of socioeconomic and natural systems in response to climate change and highlights with increasing alarm the need to address risks resulting from human-induced climate change and the importance of understanding the intersectionality of these risks.

The United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) and its partners announced that they will provide at least $1.8 billion in funding and financing to 23 more cities across nine countries to implement integrated development approaches to improve efficiency, inclusivity and resilience against climate change. 

Last week Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf issued an executive order directing the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), joining nine other Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states in a market-based collaboration to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and combat climate change. And in North Carolina, Gov. Roy Cooper’s Climate Change Interagency Council presented four key plans related to clean energy and climate change, the result of the governor’s executive order signed last year to reaffirm the state’s commitment to fighting climate change and transition the state to a clean energy economy.

Educating the next generation of workers, ensuring they will have the skills necessary for the jobs of the future and paying attention to the actions that will affect the climate are all on the agendas of the latest round of governors giving their state of the state and budget addresses. A focus on skills can be seen in addresses from governors in California, Maine, Michigan, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania. States are also continuing with initiatives to forward attention on climate change, as reflected in Maine’s climate agenda and Michigan joining other states in the Climate Alliance.

Could climate change negatively impact the defense installations important to companies and communities in your state? Chances are good that it already does. A new Department of Defense report to Congress reveals all but six of 79 mission assurance priority installations within DOD are experiencing negative climate change effects such as recurrent flooding, drought, desertification, wildfires, or thawing permafrost. Some of the installations are experiencing multiple effects.  Additionally, four of the final six are expected to see negative climate change impacts within the next 20 years, or, as the report states in “only” 20 years.

Monday’s widely covered release of a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) outlining the climate change impacts that could be avoided by limiting  global warming to 1.5°C sounded an alarm bell of scenarios that could ensue if no corrective action is taken. The report includes a summary for policy makers and finds that limiting global warming would require rapid and far-reaching transitions in land, energy, industry and cities. Another report from IPCC released earlier and overshadowed by the global impact report, focuses on specific ways cities around the world could develop a strategic framework to cope with the impacts of climate change. The Cities IPCC report contains input from more than 700 scientists, policy researchers, civic leaders and practitioners from across the planet in a wide range of disciplines, and includes a research and action agenda.

Over 150 heads of state met in Paris this week, the largest group of leaders ever to attend a UN event in a single day, to address global climate change and the need for policies and technologies that will set the world on the path to a low-carbon, climate resilient future. Two major initiatives were rolled out to spearhead the global cooperative effort, according to an Associated Press report.  First, twenty major economic powers, representing 80 percent of global clean energy research and development spending, pledged to double their investments in clean technologies. Second, Bill Gates announced the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, an effort driven by private investors to support early stage technologies emerging from the contributing countries. In the leadup to the event, the U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA-E) announced $125 million in investments for transformative energy projects.