Dear future generations, imagine for a second huge lands burned out by us into gray clouds
and hugging our sky until slowly burning ourselves again. This is the story of how it all
began.
Climate change skeptics say that human-caused CO2 emissions don't have an effect, while scientific research shows a worrying increase in temperature since the 20th century. Everything points to the second industrial revolution between 1880 and 1914, where large machines began to replace man's work, feeding his ambition to have it all.
It's true that within its 4.5 billion years of history, planet earth has experienced periods of time of lesser and greater warmth, but this shift in temperature has been determined by the distances of earth and the sun, while greater distance has resulted in colder cycles, short distance led to warmer periods. But in the late 20th century, when scientists started looking at how temperatures have changed over time, they observed a much faster rate of planetary warming from the 1980s than had previously been recorded.
By trapping heat from the sun, greenhouse gases have kept Earth's climate habitable for humans and millions of other species. But those gases are now out of balance and threaten to change drastically which living things can survive on this planet (Nunez, 2019). Some of the main greenhouse gases affecting our planet are: carbon dioxide, methane and industrial gases.
But, if they used to make earth the planet we know, what is the problem? The main problem is that they trap heat warming the planet more than it should be, but they also contribute to respiratory diseases caused by smog and air pollution. All of these causes extreme weather, disruptions to the food supply, and increased wildfire, meaning that. the typical weather patterns we are used to will change, some species will disappear, others will migrate or grow.
It's incredible how for thousands of years nature has regulated the concentration of those gases making earth a habitable place, and how we interfered with the planet’s atmospheric balance by burning fossil fuels resulting in a sharp rise of unnatural co2 emissions is unacceptable.
But after all the damage we have caused, our mortality makes us want to reduce greenhouse gases emissions, how can we do it? As the world evolves, we discover many other ways to do things better, one of those is finding new alternatives in order to evolve away from fossil fuels and replace them with renewable energy. The thing is, we have already discovered them, but the ambitiousness is hunting us because people want more and more, people want gold, petroleum, money and power. The desire of power is blinding us to take action, which makes me ask myself, do we really prefer power over life?
How disappointing it could be as the human race, distinguished for our sensibility and consciousness, to be acting with ego and killing ourselves? It is true that in order to see the change we would have to convince first big countries leading the damage, but our way of thinking also affects our actions. “Why should I make the difference if the ones that should be doing it are not?”. Twenty countries are responsible for at least three-quarters of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, with China, the United States, and India leading the way, and together we are a country, a continent, a planet.
The good news is that there are in fact many people wanting to change the statistics and give humanity another chance. Countries around the world acknowledged this reality with the Paris Climate agreement of 2015, and thanks to technology, the world technically has one fifth of the carbon budget. So, our hopes now rely on some way of adopting methods of sucking co2 from the sky. Those include planting trees, conserving existing forests and grasslands, and capturing CO2 from power plants and factories, but mainly, we have to return to the essence of being humans, taking care of our planet rather than dominance.
Bibliographic references:
Nunez, C. (2019, May 13th ). Carbon dioxide levels are at a record high. Here’s what you need to know. Environment. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/greenhouse-gases
BBC News. (2021, October 25th ). Climate change: How do we know it is happening and caused by humans? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-58954530
Ramage, D. (2023, November 27th ). Adjusting for humanity’s fingerprints. Edinburgh Impact | The University Of Edinburgh. https://impact.ed.ac.uk/research/climate-environmental-crisis/adjusting-for-humanity-s-fingerprints/
