Jim Skea, the new head of the UN's IPCC climate panel, said it was not helpful to imply that temperature increases of 1.5 degrees Celsius posed an existential threat to humanity.
In short, we aren't on track to an apocalyptic extinction, and the new head is concerned that rhetoric that we are is making people apathetic and paralyzes them from making beneficial actions.
He makes it clear too that this doesn't mean things are perfectly fine. The world is becoming and will be more dangerous with respect to climate. We're going to still have serious problems to deal with. The problems just aren't insurmountable and extinction level.
1.5 degrees can mean the collapse of entire marine ecosystems, widespread shift in farmable land and water shortages like we have never experienced. will every single human be wiped out and our species end? no. Could billions (with a B) die and society as we know it irrecoverably collapse? quite possibly. And thats not just dooming