What can people do to mitigate the worst damage to the climate?
People need to urgently intervene to avoid catastrophic global warming
Corina Cristea, 12.05.2022, 19:18
People need to urgently intervene to avoid catastrophic global warming. This is the warning of the best known researchers of climate change across the world, in a report recently issued by the UN. This document was based on over 18,000 scientific papers. The conlusions that scientists drew was that we are already dangerously close to a critical point that could lead to a cascading and irreversible climate impact. Roxana Bojariu, with a PhD in earth science, head of the research group on climate change with the National Meteorology Administration, was invited to speak on Radio Romania. She spoke about the window of opportunity to take the road that limits global temperatures to a rise of only 1.5 degrees Celsius as compared to the pre-industrial level:
“In order to be within the lines, in the next 3 years we have to reach maximal emissions, then to reduce drastically emissions in the 2030s and 2040s, so that by the early 2050 to reach climate neutrality. If we were to reach a rise in temperatures of 2 degrees Celsius in average global temperatures, when each tenth of a degree means more droughts, more heat waves rising in intensity, the rise in the level of oceans, then climate neutrality would be reached by 2070. Even though we have a lot of scientific data that can be described as very worrying, very pessimistic, we also have some good news. I would say that this good news are something new in this context of climate urgency. One piece of good news is that, even though this last decade has seen the highest concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the rate of increase has already slowed down. This gives us hope that, even though this would be hard, we could reach a peak by 2025, and then very consistently and systematically bring it down, in order to reach the Paris Treaty target. Another piece of good news is that there are tens of countries that have managed over the last decade to reduce emissions by 4% from one year to the next. We are talking about developed countries. Here we have to bring up the great difference in ability to face down climate change between developed and developing countries, or even with very weak economies and incomes. So one of the problems is how to bring the latter withing the circle of reducing emissions. We also have good news in the economic availability of renewable energy. For instance, solar cells are 85% cheaper from ten years ago, and wind energy is 50% cheaper. That is a good thing.”
The UN report also analyzes what people can do to avoid the worst effects of climate change. The most obvious way, scientists point out, is to put a stop to carbon emissions, especially in the energy and transportation sectors. Global warming is so dangerous at present, they say, that we have to develop means of extracting carbon from the atmosphere and burying it underground, or put it to other uses. The best thing for the public good is to switch as fast as we can to green energy, says Roxana Bojariu. She says that this can be done by getting involved the energy sector, and not only, by getting involved society at large, along with businesses and local communities.
“We have to wean ourselves off fossil fuels. We have stop investing in new means of producing, extracting, and using them. We can see that fossil fuel is unevenly distributed across the world, they favor conflict, because there are means of geostrategic pressure from countries that have fossil fuels and the countries that use them. So, in the end, even if it is difficult, and even if there will be transitory economic consequences, the faster we get rid of fossil fuels, the better it would be for the environment, for the climate, but also geopolitically, in terms of global conflicts.”
The worrying news does not come only from the UN. A paper published in the magazine Nature predicts, based on new models, that by 2070 we could have around 15,000 new events of viruses crossing species, because of the reorganization of the land distribution of mammals, generated by the climate changes caused by a temperature rise of two degrees. Climate change will force animals to change habitats, probably in areas with greater concentrations of people, dramatically increasing the risks for viruses to switch to people from wild animals, possibly leading to the next pandemic, the article points out. Another study, in the magazine Science, recalls that the last time that the Earth faced a mass extinction was in the Cretaceous, when a meteor and a few volcanoes destroyed much of life on Earth. 65 million years later, human beings could be the witnesses (and even the cause) of a new mass extinction in the oceans. The study says that it is certain that, if climate change will not be slowed drastically and quickly, the greenhouse effect that warms up the oceans and depletes them of oxygen, added to habitat destruction, excessive fishing, and coastal pollution, could lead to an extinction of sea life.
