Climate Change: Issues and Solutions
Climate change: –
Climate change is a real and serious issue. In this blog we will talk about climate change, explaining what causes climate change, how it affects our planet and why we need to act immediately to mitigate its effects.
The world has the perfect temperature to keep all living things alive. This temperature depends on a balance. The sun’s heat goes to the earth to make it warm. The sun’s heat bounces back to space to make the cool effect. When this balance is lost, the climate changes.
So, the climate change is an effective and long-term change in weather rate occurring for a particular area. The weather rate includes temperature, rainfall, and wind condition.
The industrial revolution, which took place more than 150 years ago, contributed billions of tons of fossil fuels to generating energy through burning. Of course, this has caused the capture of greenhouse gases, most notably: carbon dioxide. Therefore, the climate change in the globe, the temperature rose to about 1.2 degrees Celsius compared to before the industrial revolution.
Impact of climate change: –
Climate change is one of the most dangerous phenomena in the life of the planet. It affects negatively on the lives of more than six billion people living above the earth. It has become an important environmental issue in recent times because of its direct impact on air, water, agriculture and then human health.
Due to the reason that climate change has caused serious changes in geological, biological and environmental systems, the international organizations have already begun enacting laws to preserve the environment and raise awareness of the risks of climate change.
Causes of climate change: –
The causes of climate change are often attributed to high levels of anthropogenic activity, which leads to increased emissions of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Here are the most important factors affecting climate change:
- Pollution, including its various forms, whether land, air or sea.
- Human activity, and includes all practices that cause environmental imbalances, such as forest cutting or burning of trees.
- Biotic processes.
- Variation in solar radiation received by the Earth.
- Variations in the sun energy reaching Earth.
- Plate tectonics and volcanic eruptions.
- Particles and aerosols in the atmosphere can also affect climate.
- Changes in the reflectivity of earth’s atmosphere and surface.
- Changes in the greenhouses effect which, affects the amount of heat retained by earth’s atmosphere.
Damages from climate change: –
The inevitable consequences of human-caused climate change have collectively come to be known as “loss and damage”. These are some negative damages that are unavoidable:
- Decreased levels of water stocks, as the number of people in need of water will grow between 5-8 billion people in just 50 years.
- The decline of agricultural crops, and consequently the low proportion of food stocks.
- Drought occurs between different soil types.
- Rising sea and ocean levels due to the melting of massive glaciers.
- Climate disasters are increasing such as floods, droughts and storms.
- The spread of disease.
- Many animal and plant species are being driven to extinction.
Future climate change: –
A certain amount of continued warming of the planet is projected to occur as a result of human-induced emissions to date. Another 0.5°F increase in temperature would be expected over the next few decades even if all emissions from human activities suddenly stop.
However, choices made now and in the next few decades will determine the amount of additional future warming. Beyond mid-century, lower levels of heat-trapping gases in scenarios with reduced emissions will lead to noticeably less future warming.
Higher emissions levels will result in more warming and more severe impacts on human society and the natural world. The wider range of potential changes in global average temperature in the latest generation of climate model simulations used in the “Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change“.
Climate change (IPCC’s) current assessment – is simply a result of considering more options for future human behavior. For example, one of the scenarios included in the IPCC’s latest assessment assumes aggressive emissions reductions designed to limit the global temperature increase to 3.6°F (2°C) above pre-industrial levels.
This path would require rapid emissions reductions (more than 70% reduction in human-related emissions by 2050, and net negative emissions by 2100.
Overcoming climate change: –
As climate change is a development issue where it threatens to increase poverty equations and harms economic growth, therefore, solutions must be found to overcome it. However, the good news is that we are not alone. People, communities, cities, businesses, IEREK and other organizations are taking action. Here are steps you can take towards reducing climate change:
- Green your commute: leave your car at home (walk, bike or take public transit).
- Plant native, drought-resistant trees, and shrubs around your home.
- Use an electric mower instead of a gasoline-powered mower to cut your lawn.
- Eat for a climate-stable planet: buy food and other products with reusable or recyclable packaging.
- Replace your current home appliances with high-efficiency models that use less power.
- Replace incandescent light bulbs with fluorescent bulbs.
- Help put a price on pollution: most economists agree that pricing carbon is an efficient way to reduce emissions.
- Install a solar heated system to provide your hot water.
- Watch your water usage and use simple techniques to use less amount, even saving your money.
- Divest from fossil fuels.
- Recycle your home’s waste newsprint, cardboard, glass and metal.
- Put the 3 R’s of sustainability into practice (Reduce- Reuse- Recycle).
Finally, you have to know that small changes can make you feel like you are making a difference and will start to add up. As we must know that risk and costs of action are too high to ignore, so what are we waiting for? The time to act is now.
The topic “Climate change and challenges” is one of the topics that will be discussed in the international conference “Resilient and Responsible Architecture and Urbanism (RRAU) – 2nd Edition”. The conference proceedings will be published in a book series by #Springer, others will be published in Resourceedings journal.
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