Understanding environment

Climate change is a catastrophic and nightmarish mess whose elimination is extremely complicated and fairly hard-pressed. But what exactly is climate change and is it going to cost us our primitive planet?

Climate change means, “A change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable periods.” according to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Its long term effects include temperature continuing to rise, frost-free session, change in precipitation patterns, more droughts and heat waves, sea-level rise 1-4 feet by 2100 and Artic circle likely to become ice-free(according to NASA studies).

But the idea that this cataclysmic problem could unite us in any way is not feasible. First of all, you cannot separate science from politics. Second, even if the profound claims are true, we don’t know exactly how to solve this because this situation involves erratic entangled variables and as we move ahead of time our errors accumulate and predictions become unreliable. So, how exactly are we going to solve a problem in which we cannot measure the consequences of our actions?

The first decade of 21st-century scientists was struck by the astonishing reality that the clean air might kill us. “Pollution made up of the tiny particles in our atmosphere scatters light from the Sun, cooling the planet and playing the reverse role of carbon dioxide” Eli Kintisch an American science journalist explains “The tiny particle mostly sulphates from coal plants and factories, nitrates and organic aerosols from burning of forests and liquid fuels contribute to the formation of clouds, which can either block sunlight or absorb radiation”. This phenomenon was reported in IPCC 1992 report by one of the working group. It should also be noted that sulphur emissions are responsible for acid rain and other environmental effects. 

Many environmental enthusiasts and journalists made an argument that Germany’s renewable energy transition, the Energiewende, was a reliable pathway to follow. The shift away from nuclear in favour of renewables was at very least a failure. Their energy requirements were rarely met. According to Peter Altmaier, the legal commitments to support renewable energy alone would cost about $750 billion by 2022 excluding some of the infrastructure costs. The biggest problem with this massive energy shift was the fact that they turned away from nuclear without simultaneously halting the utilization of coal. There was a shift towards solar and wind but coal-powered plants were still operational. A clean energy system was set up along the contaminated one. And the political distribution in the country made the matter worst.

Climate change also increases the risk of desertification and create a social and economical disaster, particularly for countries like India which have more than 50% workforce in the agriculture sector. And its ever-increasing population put an additional constrain on carrying capacity of the resources. IPCC report on desertification suggests effective socio-economic responses include the use of ingenious and local knowledge, collective action plan and use of farm-lead innovations.

We need to realise that the problems we have today cannot be solved by the same thinking we used when we once created them. One pathway that Dr.Jordan Peterson suggests is if you get the GDP of people up to about $5,000 a year then they start caring about the environment and it cleans up. So, the most productive idea would be to get desperately poor people out of poverty as fast as possible. Keeping in mind different levels of the economy which might get affected during the conversion. We might still be able to survive in this, but what about our primitive terrestrial sphere.