The world’s climate is changing. Scientific evidence clearly demonstrates an unprecedented rate of global warming is taking place. This warming is serving as a driving force behind changes to the global climate. Leaders across the globe are confronted with the implications of an uncertain future in which the changing climate threaten significant impacts on nearly every aspect of our lives.
We are currently facing a global man-made disaster — Climate Change; which is the greatest threat to humanity in thousands of years. Anthropogenic activities are altering the Global weather patterns in ways that haven’t been seen in thousands of years, with some changes now inevitable and irrevocable. As it stands, neither the material nor the social capacities exist to adequately respond to the most pressing climatological crisis: carbon dioxide emissions. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are more than 50% higher than they were in the 1900s, and we are not only dumping more and more carbon into the atmosphere, but we are also chopping down the world’s forests at an alarming rate, despite the fact that forests are the most efficient carbon consumers. We’re tampering with the earth’s climate and the air we breathe, despite having no idea what would happen if the ozone layer disappeared.
The COVID-19 pandemic, a far smaller and more easily resolved crisis, has already exposed the depths of political apathy and dysfunction, wiped out millennial economic gains, and amplified ideological conflict. Climate change is not a single event in the long run, but a series of catastrophes that will manifest in many differently in different locations and situations. Its cumulative impacts will be far considerably larger than any subsequent pandemic; however, it will not be felt immediately because some impacts may take a lifetime to wholly materialize, but they will materialize.
Signatories to the Paris Agreement (2015) pledged to make every effort to keep global temperatures below 1.5 degrees Celsius, above pre-industrial levels. Essentially, we have till 2030 to significantly alter the way we emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, or we will most likely suffer the consequences. Findings presented at the United Nations Summit in March 2019 revealed that permafrost is melting at a higher rate than ever before, with more and more ice disappearing each year in the Arctic Region. This isn’t because we’ve reached a “tipping point”; rather, the ice is melting as a result of the already high CO2 levels in the atmosphere. As a result, once the frost has melted, the release of methane will cause global temperatures to rise by up to five degrees. In a nutshell, all elements of the climate system have changed: the atmosphere and the ocean have warmed, the amount of snow and ice has decreased, sea levels have risen, the ocean has acidified and its oxygen content has decreased, and atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations have increased.
According to the UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report 2021, CO2 emissions decreased significantly in 2020, with the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere increasing by around 2.3 parts per million, in line with recent trends. The temporal variation of around one part per million is far greater than the effect of a 5.4 percent reduction in CO2 emissions in a single year, so the reductions in emissions in 2020 are unlikely to be detectable in the atmospheric growth rate. As a result, resolving the climate crisis necessitates rapid and long-term reductions in emissions. Despite all the stories, news articles, reports and warnings about seemingly isolated cases, we continue to underestimate the threat posed by climate change. The studies we extensively read about are commonly “best case scenarios” rather than “worst case scenarios.” The warnings are echoing, and the evidence is overwhelming: emissions of greenhouse gases from fossil fuel combustion and deforestation are choking our planet and putting billions of people in danger. Although achieving the goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius is unlikely, we must now consider the consequences of failing to do so.
As a result, the world has become so fragile that we can no longer subject the earth to the torture we are currently inflicting on it. If we can’t protect nature, we can’t protect ourselves. Never can we sit back and expect miracles to save us — miracles don’t eventuate; sweat, efforts and thoughts do. If we don’t act, our civilizations will crumble, and much of the natural world will perish.
