The empirical evidence support that speed of change (or human evolution) has caused five extension level events in the history of the world, and the industrial revolution is spearheading another one; ‘global warming’.
‘It is worse, much worse, than you think’, writes David Wallace-Wells in his widely acclaimed and criticized book, The uninhabitable earth: Life after warming. The book presents a logical, and scientifical scenarios like game theory to predict the future of climate change.
The 2019 United Nations’ Climate Summit started with Secretary-General António Guterres reflecting, “the point of no return is no longer over the horizon. It is in sight and hurtling toward us.” (Sommerlad, 2019) The 2020 Summit, although happened online, the sentiment has not changed at all.
A brief review of recent natural disasters in the United States has truly been a wakeup call, with ten weather events and climate change disasters by October 2019. What is more shocking is the fact, that costs $1 billion each in terms of financial and economical losses (Smith and Arndt, 2020).
The average global temperature is 1.8oF hotter as compared to the 20th century (Barlett et al., 2019). The National Weather Service (NWS) reported a steady rise in heat-wave, with Center for Disease Control and Prevention reporting 658 deaths per year on average.
NWS reported earlier that heat has had killed more people than the natural disasters in the US over the course of the last 30 years (Leahy, 2019). Not to mention the melting of Alaskan icebergs, hurricanes like Irma, the rise of the ‘red tides’ in Florida, the raging wildfires in California, rising droughts in the Amargosa voles are merely signs of the worst.
Final Note
The Trump administration dismantled Obama’s clean energy power plans bill, withdrew from Paris Climate Agreement, and actively suppressed environment and climate-science office. With the exit of Trump, President Biden has vowed to reinstate the sustainable development solution.
The question however remains, is it enough or do we need to devise a collective global strategy to cope with the climate change as one unit, without reservations to stop heading to a future depicted by Wallace.
