The world is drifting steadily toward a climate catastrophe.
For many of us, that’s been clear for a few years or maybe a decade or even a
few decades.
But today, we are at an important turning point. The
changing climate is no longer an abstract threat lurking in our distant future
— it is upon us. We feel it. We see it. In our longer and deeper droughts and
our more brutal hurricanes and raging, hyper-destructive wildfires. And with
that comes a new urgency, and a new opportunity, to act.
Climate change is now simply impossible to ignore. The
temperature reached a record-breaking 90 degrees, Human migration patterns are
already changing in Africa and Latin America as extreme weather events disrupt
crop patterns, harm harvests and force farmers off their land, sending climate
refugees to Europe and the United States.
It’s often difficult to attribute specific events to climate
change but, clearly, strange things are happening. In India, entire cities are
running out of water, thanks, scientists say, to a dangerous combination of
mismanagement and climate change. In Syria, the civil war that has killed
hundreds of thousands of people and displaced more than 11 million is
believed by many scientists to have been sparked at least in part by
climate-related drought and warming. Closer to home, two invasive,
non-native mosquito species that have the potential to transmit
viruses, including dengue, Zika and yellow fever have recently been found in
several global cities.
It is late — terribly late — for action, but with some luck,
perhaps it is not too late to avoid some of the worst impacts of climate
change. In nations across the world, people finally recognize climate change as
a top or very serious threat.
Fewer and fewer people today doubt the overwhelming
scientific evidence: By burning fossil fuels for energy, humans have added so
much carbon (and other greenhouse gases) to the atmosphere that we are changing
nature itself, imperiling the delicate interdependence among species and
putting our own survival at risk. Scientists say with certainty that we must
radically transform how we make and use energy within a decade if we are to
have any chance of mitigating the damage.
But figuring out what must be done at this late stage is
complicated. There are a wide range of emissions sources and many ways to
approach them, ranging from the microsteps that can be taken by individuals —
Do you have to take that car trip? That airline flight? — to the much more
important macro-policies that must be adopted by nations.
Globally, 25% of greenhouse gas emissions today
comes from burning fossil fuels to create heat and electricity, mostly for
residential and commercial buildings; another 23% is the result of burning fuel
for industrial uses. And 14% comes from transportation.
All that burning of carbon fuels needs to end; yet unless
policies and politics change dramatically, it won’t end. Even in this time of
heightened clarity, two-thirds of new passenger vehicles bought globally last
year were gas-guzzling pickup trucks and SUVs.
Those SUVs will be on the road an average of eight
years, and the pickups for more than 13 years, as the time to address the
climate problem slips away. Blame for this falls not just on consumers, but also
on the manufacturers and the government, which has done too little to
disincentivize the driving of gas-powered cars.
In the years since Kyoto, the world has undertaken
significant efforts to ratchet down energy consumption, curtail coal burning
(the dirtiest of the fossil fuels) and turn to renewable energy sources, yet
overall emissions have increased.
Today there are 7.7 billion people on the planet —
twice as many as 50 years ago — and more people means more demand for power,
especially in fast-growing countries such as India and China. Last year saw a
global acceleration of emissions, as total carbon levels in the
atmosphere reached 414.8 parts per million in May, the highest recorded in
3 million years. The richer human society becomes, it seems, the more we poison
the world.
Achieving climate success demands that we’re all doing our
part. Whether it’s advocating for a meaningful climate law by calling our local
representative , or demanding that more of our power come from clean energy
sources, we all have the opportunity to push for change. Because while time is
short to turn things around, the fight is far from over.
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