The United Nations' report on climate change is dire. It says the planet's temperature has already risen 2 degrees Fahrenheit, and the effects are obvious — wildfires, drought, severe storms and sea level rise.
Dr. Sergey Paltsev of MIT called it "a very timely and very important report to remind us as humans that we'd better change our actions."
Paltsev was the lead author of the last report a few years ago. He says this one is different.
"We now know not just from the modeling, but from observations that the situation is quite alarming do we'd better take action and we'd better take actions soon," he said.
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Sarah Dooling is the director of the Massachusetts Climate Action Network. She says the report makes it clear.
"Our window for opportunity is really beginning to close down and shut on our fingers," she said.
One way to address the problem, she says, is to move away from fossil fuels and she points out buildings are the second-biggest producer of greenhouse gasses in the state.
"Part of mitigation is having building and regulating all-electric buildings where the energy source is a clean source of energy."
Boston mayoral candidate Michelle Wu has made addressing climate change a key part of her campaign and she says we can't wait any longer to act.
"Even if we were to act holistically, hugely, to get emissions down immediately, it would still be a full 20 years before we saw the impacts of that temperature stabilization," she said.
