Climate change threats are continuously widening every minute

The global warming that’s changing our climate is already having dire consequences. Whether it’s a shift of 1.5 degrees or 2 degrees, these warming levels aren’t magic thresholds. Though the current #COVID19 pandemic has come in the backdrop of another evident global crisis, a much slower one with even higher risks – climate change.

 Every rise in warming is worse for the planet than the last.

In just the past few decades:

·         Rising temperatures have worsened extreme weather events.

·         Chunks of ice in the Antarctic have broken apart.

·         Wildfire seasons are months longer.

·         Coral reefs have been bleached of their colors.

·         Mosquitoes are expanding their territory, able to spread disease.

Climate change is real

Say “climate change” and see how most people react. I find it’s a bit like “sustainable development”: a phrase at which many people quietly glaze over and switch off. So here’s the first point: Don’t switch off. Climate change isn’t just words. It is a real Thing. And man-made climate change is a very scary, real and its widening every minute.

The rise in global temperature over the last several decades is a matter of public record. There is an overwhelming scientific consensus that it can only be explained by one thing: the rise in greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activities.

Some people say that climate change is natural and we shouldn’t worry. The answer to that is that we have indeed had naturally-occurring climate change since the Earth was formed. But none of the natural causes of climate variation, from the Sun’s output, the tilt of the Earth, volcanic activity or emissions from rotting vegetation, can account for the warming we observe today.

There is only one thing that can: the emissions from fossil fuels caused by human activities over the last two hundred years. The concentrations of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere have increased by nearly 30% since the beginning of the industrial revolution.

It’s not as bad as you think – it’s worse

Here’s another inconvenient truth. Not only is global warming happening, it may be speeding up. The 20 warmest years on record have all come since 1995. The five warmest years have all been in this decade, the 2010s. 2019 was the hottest year since records began.

The environment suffered badly: numerous species, habitats, birds, trees and aquatic life were affected by the hot conditions and high demand for water. This kind of thing won’t happen every year. But it will happen more frequently, and it will happen worse. Most of us enjoyed this summer’s exceptional weather. But by 2040 it is likely there won’t be anything exceptional about summers like the one we have just had. The records will keep tumbling. Exceptional may be the new normal.

And just as the rate of temperature rise looks to be accelerating, so too does one of its main consequences: the rise in sea level. Over the last 20 years sea levels have risen at roughly twice the speed of the preceding 80 years.

It gets worse. While the international community has pledged to avoid a rise of more than 2°C in the average global temperature by 2100 compared with pre-industrial levels, many scientists think that the figure will be higher. The central scientific estimate now is that by 2100 global temperature will have risen by nearly twice the 2 degree figure - by around 3.5 °C.

Climate change has bad consequences

A big point that bears constant repetition: if we don’t tackle climate change, very bad things will happen.

“Global warming” is another of those deceptive phrases. It doesn’t sound that threatening. But who wouldn’t want a bit more sun and the weather a few degrees warmer? But the phrase is misleading because it doesn’t identify what will actually happen as the globe warms. The answer is that:

·         The tropics will be hotter and drier.

·         Sea levels will rise significantly, perhaps by up to a metre in places by 2100, as waters warm and take up more space and our glaciers and land-based ice sheets melt. Sea level rise is particularly scary, because while other climate change-driven effects like extreme flooding or drought can do terrible harm, recovery from them is possible. But there is no recovery from a rising sea: it takes land, communities, infrastructure and everything else away forever.

·         More frequent and more extreme flooding and coastal erosion, caused by those wetter winters, heavier rain, stronger storms and rising sea levels. That threatens all of us, because floods destroy: lives, livelihoods, communities.

All of these changes in climate will have consequences. They will mean:

·         More water shortages and higher drought risk, caused by the hotter drier summers and less predictable rainfall. That could do deep damage to our economy and our environment.

·         More frequent and more extreme fires and wildfires often with terrible human cost.

·         More air and water pollution, due to those longer, hotter summers. That will threaten the living world of plants and animals, our wider environment and our own health.

·         More damage to wildlife and the habitat on which it depends. In many cases that damage may be existential. If we continue to emit greenhouse gases at the same rate as today, then by 2050 one million species across the globe are likely to vanish.

So don’t get comfortable. If we allow climate change to continue unchecked, the earth’s green and pleasant land will be neither green nor pleasant. And if sea levels rise significantly, there won’t be much of our land left either.

As sea levels rise and the storms get fiercer, how much higher can we build the walls around our coasts? There’s a limit to what’s practical and affordable. And even if we build ever higher and stronger defences along the coastline, there’s another problem: our rivers.

Climate change means more rain is likely to fall more quickly into our rivers. So they will fill up quicker, and will flood the surrounding land unless they can rapidly discharge all that rainwater into the sea. But the higher tides and sea levels which climate change will also bring mean that precisely when we need our rivers to be better at discharging water to the sea, they will be less and less able to do so, because they will be increasingly tide-locked.

So we could have three nightmare future scenarios: one where high seas overwhelm our sea defences, a second where the rivers flood the land behind the defences, and a third – the worst of all – where both of these things happen together.

The result, if we fail to address these future risks, will be that many low lying parts of the country will be either permanently waterlogged, or flooded with such frequency as to be no longer habitable.

Am I exaggerating? No. It is the biggest threat out there to our economy, environment, health, way of life, our country, our world, and our future. That is why climate change is simply the biggest issue currently

But disaster is not inevitable: we can tackle this problem

That’s enough bad news. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be like this. We can tackle this problem, if we act now. Because while some of the effects of climate change - temperatures increasing, sea levels rising, wetter winters, more violent weather – will continue for the next 30-40 years no matter what we do now, we can affect what happens after that.

We know what we need to do. It’s summed up by another two words that tend to make people switch off but which also really matter: mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation means addressing the causes of climate change, by reducing or stopping the human activities which are affecting the climate system, for example by cutting our emissions of greenhouse gases.

Most of the global emissions come from the way we produce and consume energy – from heating our buildings, driving our cars, manufacturing goods, watching our TVs or boiling our kettles. We can lower our emissions by becoming more energy efficient and switching to renewable or low-carbon fuels.

As countries have made a good start, global emissions are down 43% compared to 1990, while over the same period the economy has grown significantly. That’s really important: it shows that we can both tackle climate change and grow our economy.

But most of these emission reductions have come from closing coal power stations and cleaning up heavy industry. That was the easy bit. It’s a lot harder to reduce emissions from transport, agriculture and buildings. That will require much greater use of renewable energy, and infrastructure to capture and store remaining carbon emissions. The quicker we can move ahead on all that the better.

Adaptation means making changes to prepare for, reduce and negate the effects of climate change, for example by building stronger sea defences to reduce the vulnerability of coastal communities. Other things we can and should be doing now include reducing water usage by cutting leakage and extending domestic metering; avoiding any unnecessary development in flood plains or on fast-eroding coastlines; and designing infrastructure that will be resilient to the more extreme weather we know is coming. There’s more good news. There is now a pretty broad consensus – at least in most countries - on the need to do these things. The government gets it.

While it will cost a lot of money to respond successfully to climate change, we can afford it. Indeed, it’s the best investment we could possibly make. It would be much more expensive not to respond. And the economic benefits of mitigating and adapting to climate change – in terms of damage foregone, extra growth achieved through new investment and infrastructure, prosperity boosted through innovative technology - far outweigh the costs.

Conclusion

The scandal is not that climate change is made up. The scandal is that it’s not, and that while a lot is already being done to tackle it, we are still not doing all we could. Why is tackling changing climate not at the top of everyone’s agenda? Partly, no doubt, because most people have busy lives and other things to worry about. Partly because the effects of a changing climate tend to be invisible and incremental until they are suddenly catastrophic. And maybe too because of the words we use. Language matters.

So here’s a final thought: if words like “climate change” and “global warming” have become a turn-off for most ordinary people, maybe we should change the words. Perhaps we should talk instead about what those things actually mean: killer weather, a world under water, and a mortgaged future.

Many people might not get out of bed to fight something that sounds vaguely technical and non-threatening called climate change. But pretty much all of us would do so to protect our loved ones, our homes and our livelihoods, and to build a better world.

Finally: climate change threats are widening every minute. So let’s tell it like it is, let’s tackle it together, and let’s redouble our efforts. Over the last two hundred years humans have comprehensively demonstrated that they can change the climate – and we have changed it for the worse by doing the wrong things.

Global citizens must call on their governments for urgent action on Climate Change while we still have the chance to turn things around for our planet. I think many of us have been shaken to the core by the scientific predictions of the irreversible changes to our whole world and society as we know it, if urgent action isn’t taken.

What happens next is up to us all. I truly believe that together we can bring about the transformative change that is needed. Sometimes it is better to protect ourselves by thinking of ways to make humanity more resilient to disasters that are to come.

Now let’s show we can change it for the better by doing the right things. It's not too late to slow the pace of climate change as long as we act today. Together, we can all attack this challenge and ensure that 2020 - and beyond - are safe years for humanity.