At the beginning of March, we in the UK experienced two winter storms over the course of only a few weeks. Gareth and Hannah, names designed to evoke fear and terror, generated 40-70mph winds, churned up the Atlantic ocean, and even unfortunately killed 3 climbers in an avalanche on Ben Nevis [1]. All of this during the beginning of spring, a time when weather is supposed to be warming up, when storms are supposed to cease for a while. So what does this mean? Its cold and miserable when its supposed to be warm? The answer is obvious! Global warming is a myth!
If you haven’t already clicked off this blog post in anger, you should know I’m joking. Climate is not the same thing as weather; if anything freak storms are evidence of climate change in action[2]. But you’d be surprised how often people are convinced by arguments such as this. So much so that the very idea that climate change is occurring is seen as a controversial topic.
Why do people deny it?
When I was around 12 years old I got into an argument with a woman about climate change. She said she didn’t believe in global warming, in recycling and energy reduction, because “the world has been changing all the time, it’s not like this is any different now.” This is one of the classic arguments people like to use. Its happened in the past, so why is this any different now? Why should we worry? Why should I care? Well sure, it’s happened in the past. But the last time there was a dramatic shift in global climate it killed off the megafauna. Have you seen a mammoth recently? If you’ve ever seen An Inconvenient Truth, or even done a smidge on research on the subject you’ll know greenhouse gas emissions have increased exponentially since the 1900s[3]. There are 7 billion people on the planet, currently generating over 35 billion tonnes of carbon a year[3]. You can hope that it’s not going to make a difference, and that we’ll all be fine, but considering recent research has highlighted current government policy for reducing global temperature may still not be enough to stop the ice caps melting[4], maybe you should consider that it’s time to stop avoiding the truth.
For many, it’s easier to ignore the evidence. Its quite human really, to not pay too much mind to consequences that will not happen in your lifetime. Foresight can be difficult to grasp, and if your house wasn’t blown away by a hurricane or ravaged by wildfire, or swept away by a flood, it can be easier sometimes to look the other way. This is certainly the attitude of many of the older generation. They will not live long enough to deal with the consequences, so for them ignoring the threat is easy. But for the younger generations, this is an attitude we are getting quite tired of. Recently, students around the world have been going on strike, boycotting classes to protest the lack of effort put to preventing global warming. More than 1.4 million took part in the event, from 128 different countries[5]. The inspiration for the strikes, 16 year old Greta Thunberg, has even been nominated for a Nobel peace prize[6]. The message from such protest is clear: we are of ignorance of the truth at our expense, and we refuse to sit back and let it happen.
What’s the worst that could happen?
The World Health Organisation lists climate change as one of the biggest threats to global public health in 2019[7]. Between 2030 and 2050 climate change is expected to cause an estimated 250,000 additional deaths, from factors such as malnutrition, malaria and heat stress[8]. That’s not including numbers who die from natural disasters, i.e. hurricanes, flash floods, wildfires etc. which have more than tripled in annual frequency since the 60s[8].
If climate change were to be ignored, and we enacted the “business as usual” approach, the worst that would happen is that the most vulnerable would be the first to die, and in the biggest numbers. Much of the worlds developing countries are in the tropics, which also happens to be the area with the greatest increase in frequency and severity of natural disasters due to climate change[9]. Communities here do not have the resources or infrastructure to deal with freak weather events. Take the recent cyclone Idai that struct communities in Mozambique and Zimbabwe. More than 1,000 people are estimated to have died during, and as it continues to rain more still may be affected by flooding[10]. To ignore climate change is a western privilege. We do not have to feel the worst effects.
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Politiclash
The greatest obstacle in the way of progress against climate change is more often than not within the politics of the issue. Climate change is by deniers often treated like a national issue more than a global one. Reducing greenhouse emissions won’t reduce poverty. Reducing emissions is not more important than building the economy. Even the current President of the United states once famously tweeted “The concept of Global Warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive”. Climate change is a tool used for dividing people, when the opposite should be true.
The threat of global warming and climate change should be fuel to unite us as a species, not divide us. Its not a case of the US vs China, or democrats vs republicans or whoever they are against us. Its all of us, against the problems we are all responsible for that are destroying our planet. It will take a lot of work sure, but we will make so much more progress listening to scientists and enacting change now then sticking our fingers in our ears and hoping it goes away. And to scientists I say, get involved in politics if you want to make a difference. If we want to be heard, we have to be willing to put our selves out there and make people listen.
Sources
[3] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co-emissions-by-region
[4] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-0889-9
[6] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/14/greta-thunberg-nominated-nobel-peace-prize
[7] https://www.who.int/emergencies/ten-threats-to-global-health-in-2019
[8] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-change-and-health
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