If climate change advances at the same pace, what will be the consequences for people?
Climate change will be the death of human society; be it in 10 decades or 1 billion years, if changes are not set in motion to prevent it. For many years now, the talk concerning climate change has been one in everyone’s mind considering how impactful it is to both the existence and future of Earth and the people who inhabit it. This phenomenon, which is a result of human activities, affects all regions around the world through a series of events that are expected to intensify shortly, like for instance extreme weather conditions, which leaves us thinking about what circumstances humans will have to face.
Activities such as burning fossil fuels and deforestation, increase the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, having as outcome elevations in heat, which are melting polar ice shields and causing sea levels to rise, mainly in European countries, taking as an example the city of Venice in Italy, where floods have become more of an ordinary occurrence than a natural disaster. Furthermore, the combination of these changes also results in decreasing water quality and the availability of the same.
The impacts of this crisis not only affect one area in particular but instead a whole body of branches, such as health and economy; however, although no one can escape the reality of the situation, among the most affected ones are many poor developing countries, whose economies often revolve around their natural resources. To illustrate this, there is Colombia, which depends financially on the riches of its lands. Nevertheless, the issue with this concentrates on the fact that countries like Colombia, because of their conditions, can't afford to protect themselves from climate change, and leave their populations at disadvantage.
Touching the point of health, climate change presents a critical threat to humankind. Right at this moment, there are already changes in the distribution of water-borne illnesses, as well as an increase in heat-related deaths due to UV rays; but these are not as harmful as they are expected to be in a few years, as it has been said previously.
In synthesis, although it might not seem impactful at the moment, climate change is something hugely challenging our future generations will have to face with certainty, and the least we could do right now is to help them reduce the effects of it with different approaches recommended by knowledgeable people in the topic, like for instance mitigation, which means reducing the flow of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
By Carolina León, Step 9 Yellow.
