The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the world what it is like to go through a dangerous emergency of the kind that could occur if climate change accelerates — and offers lessons on how to respond, the head of the U.N. climate science panel said Friday.
Hoesung Lee, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said the health crisis was "a foretaste of what climate change could do to our society, to nature and to our lives."
"Both climate change and COVID-19 have shown us the risks of an unthinking and rapacious approach to nature and its resources," he told an event at which scientists stressed the importance of adapting to a warming planet.