Last I left off I was in a hotel room at La Foresta Nature Resort during a torrential downpour, sitting comfortably in my room. Meanwhile, the rooms of others in our group were flooding as they had to carry their luggage over their heads through knee-deep water that may or may not have contained raw sewage. This inequality among members of our group acted as a stark reminder of the fact that major climatic events do not affect everyone equally. In fact, the sad truth is that people who are most affected by these events are those who contribute the least to climate change. This is something that we have been discussing a lot recently as the focus of our class has shifted from ecotourism to climate change.
With this shift in course topics, it seems to me that our class discussions have gotten more serious as we all seem to be feeling the direness of the state of our planet. To begin our consideration of this topic of climate change we were separated into five groups of four people in each group and assigned one chapter of the book Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet, by Mark Lynas. This book is separated into six chapters, each one describing the state of our world in a future that is one degree hotter than the chapter before (hence the name “Six Degrees”). So, for example, my group was assigned the fourth chapter, and therefore read about the effects of a 4°C warming of our Earth. This chapter talked a lot about the sea level rise that would occur due to the melting of the polar ice sheets and all of the complicated issues that it would cause. For example, as the land coverage on Earth begins to shrink, mass refugee situations would occur, forcing humanity to retreat inland. With this exodus from the coasts the world’s largest cities, many of them on or near coastlines, would be left abandoned and waiting to be eventually taken by the sea. In addition, many areas that have currently fertile soil and are thus good for agriculture would be rendered unusable in the four degree world as cycles of heavy rain and extreme drought would erode all of the soil away, leaving only topsoil and dust in their wake. These are only a couple of examples of the things discussed in my group’s chapter, and, unsurprisingly, things do not look any more optimistic in the other five chapters.
Another thing that Six Degrees talks about is the fact that these situations are not isolated. Once we get to a certain increase in global average temperature (I believe it is around 3°), we begin a positive feedback loop, where the temperature will continue to rise increasingly fast and there will be nothing that we can do about it at that point. For example, ice reflects heat from the sun, so as the ice coverage on the surface of Earth begins to decrease there will be an increased amount of heat being absorbed, which will then lead to more ice melt and so on. This is only one example of how global warming will become uncontrollable if we do not act quickly, but there are many other examples of these feedback loops that will all compound to make the situation even more dire.
One thing that I mentioned earlier is the fact that climate change does not affect everyone equally, and this is something that we have discussed a lot throughout our climate change discussions as a class. The societies that will be most quickly and directly affected by climate change will be those near coasts and those in the global south, which are generally less developed and prepared than countries such as the US and China, who contribute the most to climate change. It is a sad reality when the countries that contribute the most to greenhouse gas emissions can continue to do so selfishly while the countries that are less to blame feel the effects. In America, about 80% of our energy production is comprised of fossil fuels including oil, natural gases, and coal. We are also one of the largest emitters of CO2 in the world. We comprise only about 5% of the world population, but account for 28% of carbon emissions, so there is clearly something wrong there.
None of this has sounded very optimistic for the future of our planet, but there are actionable steps that we can take on a global scale that can prevent these futures from becoming reality. These steps may not be comfortable for us to take, especially those of us living in industrial consumerist societies whose lifestyles revolve around material goods with little respect to the waste we produce, but it is possible to combat climate change. One seemingly obvious thing that we can do as a planet to drastically reduce the risk of anthropogenic climate change is to reduce our carbon emissions by making the switch from fossil fuels as our primary energy source in favor of more renewable, clean energy sources.
While the topic of anthropogenic climate change is a complex and uncomfortable thing to discuss, we must act now to reduce our production of greenhouse gasses globally. This must begin by the countries who are most to blame for the current state of our emissions taking responsibility and leading the charge toward a more renewable and sustainable future.
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