The Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change or IPCC released a very shocking statement somewhere around a week ago stating that instead of avoiding the initial two degrees Celsius, countries should avoid an increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius. An increase of said amount will be mostly catastrophic to small island states like: the Bahamas, Maldives, and the Marshall Islands. In Incheon, South Korea, the UN had a meeting of what this temperature rise entails; the results are shocking.
The New Yorker article I researched states that “Ten million more people would be exposed to permanent inundation, and several hundred million more to climate related risks and susceptible to poverty. Malaria and dengue fever will be more prominent, and crops for maize, rice and wheat will have smaller options for growth– mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and Central and South America.”
To put into perspective the dramatic difference between the earth increasing from a 1.5 degree change to a two degree change, The New York Times shows the observations made by the IPCC: Ice free summers are ten times more likely, thirty seven of the world’s population will experience severe heat waves, over 411 million people will experience water scarcity, coral reefs will vanish, and insects, plants, and animals will start to go extinct at a rapid rate. Will we able to avoid these catastrophic numbers?
Gary Yohe, an environmental economist at Wesleyan University doesn’t think so. “My view is that two degrees is aspirational and 1.5 degrees is ridiculously aspirational.” he claims. “We need to start thinking more seriously about what a 2.5 degree or 3 degree world might look like.”
In order to even consider these numbers as feasible options, our planet as a whole needs to begin undergoing some incomprehensible changes. We’re talking new energy systems, land management, building efficiency, changing industrial operations, shipping and aviation, and new city plans. Within the next ten years, carbon-dioxide emissions need to be forty five percent below 2010 levels for improvement. And by 2050, carbon-dioxide emissions must equate to zero. The longer we wait to implement these new ideas, the more we need to consider using carbon removal, an expensive and not yet perfected way of literally sucking carbon-dioxide out of the atmosphere. So what is the UN going to do about it? Let alone, the US.
After the Trump Administration left the Paris Agreement in June of 2017, there have been little signs of help with the control of climate change. Wealthy nations (including the US) had a discussion with the smaller developing countries in 2010 offering them as much as $100 billion to assist with rising sea levels that will affect them far before it affects us. This payment is to be made by 2020, and no wealthy nation has stuck to said promise. In December of this year, international leaders are to meet in Poland to discuss climate change, who knows how it will go.
The Trump Administration is constantly curbing gas emission regulations made by the Obama Administration and they’re not likely going to stop. This issue may seem out of our reach, but there is still hope. Down below are some organizations to donate to to further help the cause. Maybe one day people will put our precious and beautiful planet before our desire for burning coal and killing the place we call home.