Climate as Threat Multiplier

Climate change intensifies every other driver of extinction. Species already stressed by habitat loss face shifting temperature zones that may move faster than they can. Mountain species get pushed toward summits with nowhere left to go.

Coral reefs show the pattern: reefs degraded by pollution and overfishing are far less resilient to marine heat waves than healthy ones. Climate delivers the final blow to ecosystems already weakened by direct human impacts.

Two degrees of warming could put twenty to thirty percent of assessed species at higher extinction risk. At four degrees, entire biomes could collapse.