Written by Yash Singh Sisodia
Earth’s average temperature has increased about 1.1 degrees Celsius and according to a recent study, the planet's temperature is now rising at a more accelerated rate and this phenomenon is popularly known as global warming. The evidence of climate change is also confirmed in the study of the world meteorological organization that considered the past five years as the record
warmest. The reason may be the technological penetration, increasing dependency on natural resource or changes in leisure patterns due to western culture imitation, as a result, the most drastic changes caused by climate change is heatwaves, drought, and sea-level rise (Hiranmay 2020).
In the previous five years, the sea level rose 5mm per year and directly affected 2.5 million people in terms of homelessness. By 2050 about 570 coastal areas and cities like lima, Buenos Aires, New York, Dakar, London, Karachi, Mumbai, Chennai, Surat, Shanghai, and Bangkok are expected to be the most affected due to the rise in sea level. Additionally, about one million people face the harms of climate change. The effect is also visible in the area of vegetation, agriculture, and the fruiting cycle of plants and trees.
From 1850 till the end of the 21st century, the global temperature is likely to increase from 3 degrees to 5 degrees. Some scientists and policymakers even argued that rising in temperature up to 2 degrees is the gateway of dangerous heat warming. It needs to be kept within 1.5 degrees. The maj
or cause of climate change is unmonitored greenhouse gases like methane and co2 into the atmosphere even though some gases naturally exist in the atmosphere to maintain the temperature of the earth but the concern is extra emission largely produced by the human-oriented activity. The continuous tendency of humans to dominate nature in one way or the other to satisfy the immediate gratifications will become a serious concern for the survival of future generations.
So to reduce the emission we have two fundamental ways- one is reducing the emission from all activity and the second is to remove emission from the atmosphere but as scientists have argued that even cutting of gases would not help mitigate the harmful climate effects immediately because water bodies and ice take hundreds of year to respond to such changes, therefore, it could take decades to remove co2 from the atmosphere.
Similarly, the uncertain changes will create a drastic shortage of fresh water, and conversely, affects food production on one hand and increase mortality rates on the other due to floods, drought, storms, and heart weaves. Moreover, the impact on human health due to climate change is understudied in current works of literature particularly in most geographically restricted parts. In addition to that study show, if polar ice melts at current rates, it will increase the chances of different virus growth which directly impacts the human immune and adaptation capacity. Extinction of plants and animals are predicted as habitats change at a faster rate than species can adapt (Bindi et al . 2019); (DAISY 2020).
From cars to the internet services all the things require some resources but the irony is that humans got used to all the technological stuff still unsatisfied and want more and more due to less stable human nature but having very limited resources to employ and thus creates uncertainty for the less privileged people who are not able to cope up with the negative consequences of the climate change (Ebi et al 2017).
Finally, we as a young and active generation need to get familiar with the popular sources of environmental degradation along with the model mitigation strategies and best practices employed globally. Like Vertical sea-wall structures created on the coastal areas to prevent the field from negative climate impacts and thereby prevent coastal erosion. Similarly CDP a nonprofit environmental organisation introduces the competitive ranking related to climate change leadership to enforce environmental conservation along with economic competitiveness among top CO2 emission countries. Lastly, the strategy named “managing the crises from below” talks about not depending on government or higher authorities to take charge of climate change instead create deep awareness among the present generation through socialisation, syllabus, community involvement, or activities so that they get familiar with the seriousness of our times.
REFERENCES Bindi et al . Impacts of 1.5°C of Global Warming on Natural and Human Systems. Italy: IPCC, 2019.
DAISY, DUNNE. Q&A: Could climate change and biodiversity loss raise the risk of pandemics? May 15, 2020. https://www.carbonbrief.org/q-and-a-could-climate-change-and-biodiversity-loss-raise-the-risk-of-pan
demics (accessed December 14, 2020).
Ebi et al, . "Health Risks and Costs of
Climate Variability and Change." NCBI, 2017: 2.
Hiranmay, Karlekar. Combat climate change. December 12, 2020. https://www.dailypioneer.com/2020/columnists/combat-climate-change.html (accessed December 14, 2020).
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