Despite what many of us having being saying for years and trying to avert by bringing it to the attention of everyone, it has not been enough. Because we as people have refused to change even the smallest of things ranging from cutting down on waste, using the car less, recycling, eating less meat to name but a few. There are so many ways in which we all could have and still can do to try and slow down the warming of the planet.
On one of my favourite websites I found this article, it is not all doom and gloom, but everyone has to do their bit, not leave it to others to do, but actually taking responsibility for their own actions. One small change can help. Here is the article.
"1.5° C Warming Is Inevitable Despite the Paris Accord, Scientists Warn
An international team of scientists have analyzed recent climate trends and warn between 1.5° C and 2° C atmospheric warming is virtually certain to happen, according to a report in Nature Climate Change. The current Paris Accord CO2 targets are not aggressive enough to prevent reaching this critical tipping point. Andrew Dessler of Texas A&M University, one of the report coauthors, told EcoWatch: “While I would not categorize this as good news, it is not game over for the climate.” In other words, we can set more aggressive limits on carbon emissions. Dressler explained the findings in a YouTube video. These reports echo the comments on a recent Earth911 podcast with James Renwick, coauthor of the upcoming 2021 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UNIPCC) report and head of the School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences at Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand. What can we do? In addition to supporting a rapid transition to renewable energy, we can embrace electric vehicles and stop driving internal combustion vehicles. Renwick also suggested that reducing the amount of meat in our diets, particularly industrially raised cattle, will make a big difference.
Scientists Call for Declaration of Climate Emergency
Another team of climate researchers published a call for a global declaration of a climate emergency in Scientific American this week. Pointing to record global temperatures, a historically long hurricane season that caused more than $41 billion in damages in the U.S. and Caribbean, and wildfires that burned more than 4 million acres in California, they declared that, “The climate emergency has arrived and is accelerating more rapidly than most scientists anticipated.” Earth911 will have coauthor William Ripple of Oregon State University on the podcast in the coming week. The call for a climate emergency comes on the heels of another Scientific American report that atmospheric warming is reshaping ecosystems as animals and plants respond to higher temperatures. But minds are starting to change, too. A University of Houston survey found that four out of five Texans now acknowledge climate change is real. It is time for steps toward a sustainable future. Let’s hope that this week’s calamitous events in Washington, D.C., lead to a fundamental shift in the national dialogue and that we respond forcefully to the emerging global crisis."
Horses panic as a wildfire approaches near Canberra, Australia in February of 2020. Credit: Getty Image
I understand that people have the opinion that nothing that they do is affecting the rest of the planet, but it is! We really must all try to do something.
"The climate emergency has arrived and is accelerating more rapidly than most scientists anticipated, and many of them are deeply concerned. The adverse effects of climate change are much more severe than expected, and now threaten both the biosphere and humanity. There is mounting evidence linking increases in extreme weather frequency and intensity to climate change. The year 2020, one of the hottest years on record, also saw extraordinary wildfire activity in the Western United States and Australia, a Siberian heat wave with record high temperatures exceeding 38 degrees C (100.4 degrees Fahrenheit) within the Arctic circle, a record low for October Arctic sea ice extent of 2.04 million square miles, an Atlantic hurricane season resulting in more than $46 billion in damage, and deadly floods and landslides in South Asia that displaced more than 12 million people.
Every effort must be made to reduce emissions and increase removals of atmospheric carbon in order to restore the melting Arctic and end the deadly cycle of damage that the current climate is delivering. Scientists now find that catastrophic climate change could render a significant portion of the Earth uninhabitable consequent to continued high emissions, self-reinforcing climate feedback loops and looming tipping points. To date, 1,859 jurisdictions in 33 countries have issued climate emergency declarations covering more than 820 million people.
In January 2020, we warned of untold human suffering in a report titled World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency with more than 11,000 scientist signatories from 153 countries at time of publication. As an Alliance of World Scientists, we continue to collect signatures from scientists, with now more than 13,700 signatories. In our paper, we presented graphs showing vital signs of very troubling climate change trends with little progress by humanity. Based on these trends and scientists’ moral obligation to “clearly warn humanity of any catastrophic threat” and to “tell it like it is,” we declared a climate emergency and proposed policy suggestions. We called for transformative change with six steps involving energy, short-lived air pollutants, nature, food, economy and population"
How many more times will we ignore what is going on! The time to do something was YESTERDAY! and TODAY and TOMORROW.
We cannot keep blaming businesses, governments, everyone else for the things that we are ALL not doing. It is the fault of us HUMANS for the mess we now find ourselves in, so it is up to us to put it right.
Make those lifestyle changes, even if it is just you, others will too in the end. It is up to people like you and me to convince people that even a small action can make a difference. This wonderful planet is our only home and we must act to save it, NOW.
The blog song for today is" It´s a living thing" By Electric Light Orchestra
TTFN
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