The world is getting warmer: its average temperature has risen by 1.1 degrees celsius in the past 150 years. Millions of measurements collected from around the world have confirmed this alarming trend - the Earth hasn’t been this hot for more than 120,000 years. The rise in global temperatures is positively correlated with two main activities: fossil fuel burning and deforestation - both sharply increasing with the Industrial Revolution. Centuries of years later the consequences are appearing, including rising sea levels and an increase in extreme weather events. Climate change sceptics have however argued that humans are not the cause of this, that it is a natural event and that Earth’s global temperatures have been hotter in the past. Although it is true that several phenomena highly affect temperatures, including Milankovitch cycles, volcanic eruptions, and short-term climate events, the fact remains that human activities have alleviated the temperatures even further than natural events have done; models have even shown that removing human activities would lead to low levels of global warming. Furthermore, although it may be true that the Earth has experienced sustained levels of warming far greater than this, not only would the majority of species present today not survive such events, including homo sapiens, but these changes also occur over much longer periods, giving more time for organisms to adapt to changing climatic conditions. So what are the best steps to prevent the sixth mass extinction? We all know the classic sayings: to go by public transport more, use less single-use plastics, and turn the lights off when we are not in the room. Although it is true that saving the environment starts with one’s actions and if carried out on a global scale would have some major impacts, the major causes must be tackled stronger, otherwise, other changes to lifestyle etc will have little impact.
So what are the biggest steps we can currently take as a population to tackle these major causes? Firstly, tackling fossil fuel burning. The advantages of doing this are evident: this gives ready-to-use energy that is used all around the globe for numerous purposes: heating homes, manufacturing, transportation, and almost anything. The need for energy is obvious, but how we can utilise the earth’s resources to accumulate it varies. In the short term, burning fossil fuels is easy and gives a high yield. However, looking at longer-term solutions to the energy problem that will not potentially lead to mass extinctions, we have to look at clean energy sources: renewables (wind, solar) and nuclear energy. Although it would be ideal if we immediately made the switch from one to another, it is not possible to do this for numerous reasons. Firstly, installing (and regulating) renewable energy sources are much more expensive than current energy sources, and governments across the world do not yet have the power to carry this out in an instant. Secondly, we do not even have enough resources that replace the energy we are gaining from fossil fuels, and big organisations and governments are not yet willing to place the funds in to build these (mainly due to their price, however perhaps due to money ties with fossil fuel giants). Therefore, two main actions must be carried out over the next few decades to combat these problems. Firstly, research must continue to be carried out, focussing on increasing the efficiency of renewables, and decreasing the price to install and maintain them - this is critical if they are to be the future of our energy sources, which they must be as fuel is running out fast, and will continue to do so with growing populations. Following this, there must be a push to continue to install these renewables in high quantities - this will come through incentivisation on big companies that are involved with this, for example taxing coal, subsidising renewable energy, and a push from the general public. These pushes can be alleviated through education about the climate crisis (through school curriculums, movies, documentaries etc) and can be carried out through different forms of strikes, demonstrations, and petitions. If carried out correctly, the problem of sourcing clean(er) energy can be fixed, solving one of the major problems of the climate crisis.
The next problem lies in the deforestation crisis we are facing, along with the destruction of corals and general habitats across the globe and biodiversity loss. The reason why these are so critical is that coral and trees carry out photosynthesis, removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and pumping out oxygen in replacement - they are such critical components of solving this crisis, as it is all mainly arising from too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. There are several reasons why deforestation is currently occurring, mainly producing timber/wood and providing space for agriculture, farming cattle, and growing soy and palm oil. We do need to provide resources for the growing population (currently over 8.08 billion) - it is not possible to stop the production of all these resources and let the forests recover. Resource production and deforestation levels need to be balanced in some way that is currently not manageable now - we are placing presidence on the resource production side of the balance, with less concern for the dangers that deforestation and similar problems are causing and will continue to cause in the future. This balance will lead to the eventual destruction of planet Earth, and thus it must be shifted accordingly to a more sustainable measure. The word ‘sustainable’ is often a charged one, meaning to conserve an ecological balance by avoiding depletion of natural resources - companies which do not meet this criterion have begun using it as a selling point of their products/services unjustly. One way to combat this is to introduce much stronger limits to which ‘sustainability’ can be used, with legal measures taken upon those who misuse it - this means that the consumer can choose easier between products, while being encouraged to purchase those that are sustainable, once again through measures such as subsidisation. Currently, 90% of tuna bought in stores has a ‘sustainable fishing’ label, while at the same time, such species are suffering major decreases in populations. The companies providing these labels are functioning on a business motive instead of an ecological one, thus depreciating the value of the label as it can be bought for any company’s product for a price: this must be changed immediately the entire purpose of these sustainability labelling companies is to have any purpose.
But how can such companies act sustainably, if they need more and more space to fabricate more resources for a larger population? One or more of these three factors must be varied, more likely being a combination. Either the resources need to be made more efficiently (the same quantity on a smaller crop of land); the resources need to be used more efficiently (less wastage); or the population needs to be controlled. The resources will only be able to be made more efficiently fabricated through research: this is currently a large area that is being looked into, for example, Oxford University’s research into genetically engineering the rice crop to adapt its method of photosynthesis to fit its conditions better. However, this area of research takes decades and is not an immediate solution to our immediate problem, so although this must continue, this must be combined with another solution. Next, we can look at using these resources provided more efficiently: this ultimately comes down to the person and is hard to carry out immediately as it involves an entire shift in the mentality of our population. Currently, 17% of the food available to consumers is wasted, with 60% coming from homes - this does not include all food produced that, although completely edible, is not put onto the market due to not fitting the physical quotas (for example a deformed carrot, a smaller cucumber, an oddly shaped apple). If this wastage was even to be partly reduced, then this would have such a major impact on our climate, however, it is extremely difficult as so many act based on ‘what I do means nothing as I’m 1 in 7 billion’. If education on this matter (adverts, classes, documentaries) can be prioritised, then this can help the matter - however this can only help to a certain extent, as just as resources cannot be produced infinitely efficiently, they cannot be distributed with an infinite efficiency that will outweigh the increasing population. Thus, the most important factor that must be combatted is our population crisis - our planet has finite space and resources, and will not be able to deal with a constantly increasing population. Several things can be done to deal with this: along with education on the problem and the importance of having fewer offspring (and the education of contraception to deal with this), restrictions can be placed to help limit the number of offspring the average family has. Although the One Child Policy in China was infamous for the side effects it had, it was partly successful in dealing with the population problem at hand. A balance could be to introduce laws that make it harder for families to have high numbers of offspring (i.e. greater than two), this could involve higher taxes on those who have more children, laws against having a certain number of children, or others. Tackling these three problems, which will arise mainly from government actions (but also individual actions), will be the first step into sustainable practice.
Tackling these two major fields will give us a fighting chance against climate change and the problems that arise from it, and may eventually give life around us the chance to redevelop in the many areas we have damaged. Governments must take rapid action against climate change, as the longer it carries on, the more severe the consequences, and the harder it is to tackle. Although have had meetings such as the recent COP28, where countries decide on solutions and aim for goals, these are not often reached, and countries often give empty promises, leading to little progress made against arguably the biggest problem that humanity has faced. The most important thing that can be done first to combat this problem is for governments of the world to begin to understand the severity of this problem and to begin to properly listen to scientists: as has been discussed above, they are the root of the solution. Please note that this is just my view (as a 17-year-old) and I am not claiming to have all the answers to a problem that the entire humanity is struggling with!
I hope you have enjoyed this blog post, which investigates such a major problem that we face today. Please give your views and ideas for solutions in the comments!
Comments