MOSCOW, August 20 – RIA Novosti. Climate change will make the Middle East uninhabitable, write Council on Foreign Relations analysts Christina Buri and Stephen Cook in an article for Foreign Policy.

The authors noted that many countries in the region experienced abnormally high temperatures, which coincided with the Muslim Hajj. The weather killed more than 1,300 people.

“Climate change will make the Middle East uninhabitable. This summer has been brutal for the region, and its effects will spread to the rest of the world,” the article states.

The persistent heat is bringing with it huge problems of drought and water shortages, including deadly dehydration and disease, analysts say.

According to Cook and Buri, the only option for the population of the Middle East is to migrate en masse to regions with more comfortable living conditions.

“For people in this region, the destination will be Europe,” the authors warned.

General Secretary UN Antonio Guterres has previously said that the Earth’s temperature could rise by 2.8 degrees by the end of the century unless countries radically step up their decarbonisation strategies. The key agreement in this area is the 2015 Paris climate agreement, which envisages measures to limit the increase in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius, with a maximum of 2 degrees by 2100.

As part of the global climate agenda, most countries have adopted programs to achieve carbon neutrality, i.e. a balance between anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, and others) and their absorption both through technological solutions (renewable energy sources, transport electrification, CCUS in industry, hydrogen) and through natural ecosystems (primarily forests). Russia plans to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.