ClimateChangers

Climate Change - Who Cares?

Climate change is a topic that has been rehashed time and time again, but are people tuning in? Is any real progress being made towards protecting and saving our planet?
This interactive article aims to investigate how people really feel about climate change, what climate change means and how it affects us, and why you too should (or shouldn’t) care about it.

PUBLIC OPINION

CURRENT SITUATION

Global warming is a big part of climate change, and is caused by the presence of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere. In the past 30 years, world greenhouse gas emissions have increased by nearly 45% at a rate higher than ever before. In fact, according to NASA, carbon dioxide, the largest contributor, is at its highest concentration in the air in 650,000 years! These high levels of carbon dioxide come mainly from human activities (such as burning of fossil fuels, deforestation and livestock farming) and thus fuel the global warming crisis leading to drastic climate changes across the globe such as increasing temperatures and melting ice caps.

In the graph of temperature, the change in global surface temperature is relative to 1951-1980 average temperatures. We can see the dramatic increase in temperature in the last 40 years and how today the global temperature is about 1.2 degrees Celsius higher than 100 years ago! In the ice melting graph, thousands of gigatonnes of ice are being lost each year and although it is unlikely for us to see all the earth’s ice to melt in our lifetimes, the effects such as rising sea levels may still cause us devastating consequences, as we’ll talk about in the next section.

With increasing temperatures, the summers are increasingly hot and we use more electricity through fans and air conditioning to keep cool. However since more than 50% of the world’s electricity is generated by fossil fuels, this in turn also releases more carbon emissions into the atmosphere further contributing to global warming and perpetuating this vicious cycle of climate change.

EFFECTS ON HUMANS

The effects of climate change might seem out of reach. It is easy to think that this issue is not our concern. Yet, as humans we have already been paying the debts. From figure 7, we observed an increased total number of all natural disasters. Notably, flood, shown in green, has doubled in occurrence since 2000 and storms, shown in blue, have gradually doubled from 1980 to 2000. This could possibly be due to an increase in sea level due to melting of ice as discussed in the previous section. This has a direct correlation to an estimated 3.84% of the world population who used to live on land and will have to flee from their home! From graph 9, we can see low-lying countries in different continents such as Marshall Island, Maldives, Vietnam, etc. would have the largest proportion of its civilians affected by flooding. Countries will have to find new lands for them, and the people will need to build new homes in the near future. The effect of climate change on humans is real.

As a matter of fact, climate change not only affects humans, it is also affecting 19% of species listed as threatened on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™, increasing the likelihood of their extinction. Many species have already gone extinct, coral reefs, which form one of the most biodiverse ecosystems, are among the most rapidly declining species groups due to rising ocean temperatures.The next time one goes scuba diving, there might not be as beautiful a scene as it used to be undersea. Climate change has also advanced the flowering date for many temperature sensitive flower species such as P. davidina. If the global temperature continues to rise at an unprecedented speed, flower species which could not catch up with it might go extinct. While it means we can go hanami (a traditional Japanese culture of watching cherry blossoms with loved ones in Spring), who knows if what happened to coral reefs can also happen to temperature sensitive flowers we enjoy watching in Spring?

WHAT CAN WE DO?

We saw in figure 2 that a lot of people think that citizens in their countries are not doing enough to fight climate change and in the Effects on Humans section that there will be disastrous consequences if climate change continues to occur at its current rate. But have no fear! There are actions that governments are taking and that you too can do to help reduce climate change.

Nearly 200 countries have signed onto the Paris Climate Agreement, a legally binding international accord whose goal is to limit global warming by countries committing to plans and actions to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions (UN Climate Change). Achieving its preferred goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius global warming would mean that hundreds of millions of people could be saved from having their homes flooded or destroyed by natural disasters, as well as reduce melting of the ice caps (Natural Resources Defense Council).

Transportation is a major contributor to carbon dioxide emissions, particularly passenger cars. As companies seek low carbon energy alternatives such as in the development of electric cars, these emissions can be significantly decreased by 2070. In fact, on an individual level, some of the most impactful actions to reduce your carbon footprint are to live car free and take one less airplane flight per year. As mentioned in an article by the BBC, the carbon dioxide emissions from a regular transatlantic round-trip flight is about equivalent to the average yearly emissions of a single person in India! Other actions you might want to consider are supporting the move to low carbon emission alternatives by purchasing green energy, and eating a plant-based diet and/or local-grown food.

“THE EARTH IS OUR HOME. LET’S TAKE CARE OF IT.”

To calculate your carbon footprint, you can go to https://www.terrapass.com/