The Climate: we are changing it, and we can change it again
By Hanna Sundahl
You have probably seen by now pictures of smog engulfing major cities in China, and the pictures of burning forests in Indonesia last year. What do these have in common? They are large-scale human-induced (anthropogenic) changes. The former is attributed to the large amounts of coal produced for the Chinese energy sector (Bloomberg, 2015). The latter scenario is occurring because of a combination of predictable and unpredictable causes: large tracts of forest are burned to make way for large-scale production of e.g. oil palms (used for cooking oil, snacks, and cosmetics, among other things), but the periodic, unpredictable climate event El Niño we are experiencing right now also increases drought across the peninsula, reducing the amount of rain that otherwise extinguishes these fires (Balch, 2015).
But while this should show you at what scales we can change the planet, climate skeptics will argue that global climate change is entirely natural, not anthropogenic. Climate change does indeed occur continuously, and we can observe changes until around 400,000 years ago by looking at the gas percentages in trapped air bubbles in ice cores such as those in Antarctica (Barnola, et al., 2003). But evidence from this as well as from present-day observations like those made at the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii show atmospheric CO2 content and the average global temperature have been on a growing trend ever since the start of the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s, and the last decade has the been the warmest on record, see figure below (IPCC, 2014). By now, most climate scientists (97%) agree that we are seeing global warming and that this can largely be attributed to anthropogenic fossil fuel burning and land-use change (NASA, 2016). But it’s not entirely the amount of CO2 we’re releasing, but the rate that should make you turn off your TV, hop off your couch, and run over to that climate march. Digging up and burning fossils that have been sequestered over some million years disrupts the slow natural carbon cycle (IPCC, 2014). Now, considering humans have been so adept at extracting all this in such a short time, it makes sense to think that the earth is “fighting back”, trying to reach homeostasis much like a living organism.
Temperature data from four international science institutions, showing an increasing trend and record warmth for the past decade. Data sources: NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, NOAA National Climatic Data Center, Met Office Hadley Centre/Climatic Research Unit and the Japanese Meteorological Agency. Image © NASA. Retrieved from: http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/
Climate change affects us in all sorts of ways: extreme weather events increase in frequency, food security and shelter become threatened, which in turn worsens poverty and health, and destabilizes social and political infrastructures. But to fight against this, we have to be frank about what the solution is: stop using fossil fuels and start using renewable, cleaner energy. Our reluctance to switch to more renewable energy sources exists in part due to misinformation. For example, solar panel and wind turbine production are actually declining in cost, and, once installed, are essentially free, unlike plantations running on fossil fuels. Production is continuously increasing, including in Saudi Arabia and China, the latter mainly to deal with the health-damaging smog problem (Lewis, 2015). As the movie “This Changes Everything” states, perhaps the status quo Capitalism is a major source of this evil?
Al Gore sums up the motivation to fight against climate change more succinctly than I can in one blog post with his newest TED talk “The case for optimism on climate change”, which I urge you all to see → http://tinyurl.com/hpd4yxp. He lists all the challenges that I mentioned and more, but also brings to light the motivating fact that we CAN change and ARE in fact heading in the right direction to a more renewable, sustainable energy regime.
So it’s not actually the lack of investment or knowledge holding us back, though public outreach can always be improved. As cheesy as it sounds, we just need to be able to BELIEVE it is possible to slow down anthropogenic climate change.
Perhaps it’s alright for some to think we will become the next dinosaurs anyway, let’s just go about with business as usual…but, why hasten the extinction process? I don’t believe it’s a time to give up; consider instead the optimism in seeing the combined forces of people making their voices heard together with research and investment made into more sustainable solutions for the future.
References
Balch, O. (2015, November 11). Indonesia’s forest fires: everything you need to know. Retrieved from Guardian sustainable business: http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/nov/11/indonesia-forest-fires-explained-haze-palm-oil-timber-burning
Barnola, J. M., Raynaud, D., Lorius, C., & Barkov, N. I. (2003). Historical CO2 record from the Vostok ice core. Trends: A Compendium of Data on Global Change. Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, U.S.A.
Bloomberg. (2015, December 30). China to Halt New Coal Mine Approvals Amid Pollution Fight. Retrieved from Bloomberg Business: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-30/china-to-suspend-new-coal-mine-approvals-amid-pollution-fight
IPCC. (2014). Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Core Writing Team, R.K. Pachauri and L.A. Meyer (eds.)]. Geneva: IPCC.
Lewis, A. (Director). (2015). This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein [Motion Picture].
NASA. (2016). Scientific consensus: Earth’s climate is warming. Retrieved from Global Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet: http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/
Yes, we can change it again, and we must.
A question is, do we need the economic growth at the cost of climate?
The answer will imply how fast we can change the climate again.
Yes, there is no doubt that the rise in temperature is costly for a human being to sustain, again the question is what we need? The development or the environment. We need both and the simultaneous sustainable approach will be awarded. For example, Payments for ecosystem services (PES) schemes are emerging as new market-based approaches for forest conservation. Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (or REDD+) are a set of international policies designed to compensate landowners for demonstrable reductions in forest-based carbon emissions. This helps to motivate people, especially in developing countries, to conserve forest.