Half of the world’s population depends on seasonal melt from high-elevation snow and ice, deposits that are dramatically threatened by warming. Even if we hit the Paris targets, the glaciers of the Himalayas will lose 40 percent of their ice by 2100, or possibly more, and there could be widespread water shortages in Peru and California, the result of glacier melt. At four degrees, the snow-capped Alps could look more like Morocco’s Atlas Mountains, with 70 percent less snow by the end of the century. As soon as 2020, as many as 250 million Africans could face water shortages due to climate
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