What is the climate change crisis?
The impact of climate change on human health is becoming more evident and life-threatening. Climate change has grown to become the defining crisis of this present time. The consequences of global warming, which is due to climate change, can be described using the term called climate crisis.
What is climate change crisis?
Climate change is a significant and long-term change in average conditions of the weather like temperature, rainfall, and so on. These changes have resulted in a frequent and severe rise in sea level, heatwave, drought, storms, and also glaciers melting. Our activities such as the burning of fossil fuel, deforestation, intense farming, improper waste disposal, and other mining activities are the major cause of climate change. These activities have added a huge amount of greenhouse gases like water vapor, carbon dioxide, ozone, etc., into the atmosphere, thereby increasing the greenhouse effect and leading to global warming. Due to these changes, animals, plants, and most especially, we as humans are now faced with a global threat that threatens the core of its existence. The Climate crisis has resulted in several devasting occurrences like volcano eruptions, earthquakes, hurricanes, desert encroachments, and so on.
What are the primary causes of the climate change crisis?
There several causes of environmental crisis, but we are mostly the perpetrators of them. Since the advent of technology, our activities as humans have contributed negatively to the safety and welfare of the environment. Technology has brought about machines that use fossil fuels as energy sources, which has, in turn, increased the number of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere. We have cut down trees to build houses and companies, and the intense agricultural activity like livestock has increased the amount of methane in the air, coupled with other mining activities carried out by us. Improper disposal of waste and overpopulation is other causes. To sum it up, our negligence as humans is the primary cause of this crisis.
What drives the climate change crisis?
The pollution that is driving climate change is from the burning of fossil fuels, coal, oil, and natural gas.
Fossil fuels are compounds or substances that contain a large amount of carbon and other elements like Sulphur and nitrogen. There are about four types of fossil fuels and they are coal, petroleum, natural gas, and Orimulsion. When fossil fuel is burnt, it releases a huge amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The carbon emitted from the combustion of fossil fuel traps heat in the atmosphere. Therefore, when there is a continuous release of huge quantities of these fossil fuels, there will be an accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which will lead to rising in the surface temperature of the earth, which is also referred to as global warming and climate change. Climate change which includes global warming, has resulted in drought, heavy rainstorms, a rise in sea level, and melting glaciers.
Related: Corporate and Personal Choices Regarding the Environment of the Future
Are we entering a new epoch?
Simply put, an epoch is a period in time that is marked by a remarkable event or feature. Currently, geologically, we are in an era called the Holocene Epoch which began about a 0.012million years ago. Before the Holocene Epoch was the Glacial Epoch or the ice age. The glacial epoch gave way for the Holocene epoch when the earth entered a warming trend that caused the glaciers to treat, and the tundra gave way to forests. Even some animals like mammoths went to extinction. Currently, the world is experiencing trending global warming, and if measures are not taken to tackle it, we might just be entering into a new era.
What experts say about the environmental crisis?
The environmental crisis or climate change crisis is the unexpected and irreversible degradation of the environment, which will eventually lead to significant losses or damages to the ecosystem. According to experts, the major causes of environmental crisis ranges from pollution of all kinds, deforestation, overpopulation, and so on. Experts say that air pollution is found to be the largest and foremost cause of the environmental crisis, and at the current rate of carbon dioxide emission, expert says they expect the temperature of the earth’s surface to increase by 1.5°and 5.3°C by 2100.
This, they say, if no action is taken, would have a devasting consequence for us humans and the biosphere.
- What Lessons Is the Current Environment Giving Us as a Society?
- Grassroots Movements and Environmental Change
- Embracing Sustainability: Lessons from Our Environment
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