After more than a century and a half of industrialization, deforestation, and large scale agriculture, quantities of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have risen to record levels not seen in three million years. As populations, economies and standards of living grow, so does the cumulative level of greenhouse gases emissions. Climate change is potentially irreversible threat to human societies. Climate change is shifting of weather patterns that threaten food production, rising sea levels that increase the risk of catastrophic flooding, the impacts are global in scope and unprecedented in scale. Without drastic action today, adapting to these impacts in the future will be more difficult and costly.
- The concentration of GHGs in the earth’s atmosphere is directly linked to the average global temperature on Earth.
- The most abundant GHG, accounting for about two-thirds of GHGs, is carbon dioxide (CO2), is largely the product of burning fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions account for around 80% of global warming.
- In 2013, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its report made a categorical conclusion: climate change is real and human activities are the main cause.
- It also estimates and provides a CO2 budget for future emissions to limit warming to less than 2°C. About half of this maximum amount was already emitted by 2011.
- Oceans have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished and the sea level has risen.
- The sea ice extent in the Arctic is shrinking. Given current concentrations and ongoing emissions of greenhouse gases, it is likely that the end of this century that global mean temperature will continue to rise. The world’s oceans will warm and ice melt will continue. Most aspects of climate change will persist for many centuries, even if emissions are stopped.
- The leading irreversible changes in the planetary climate system, may already have been reached or passed. Mountain glaciers are in alarming retreat and the downstream effects of reduced water supply in the driest months will have repercussions that transcend generations.
- In October 2018 the IPCC issued a special report on the impacts of limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require rapid, far reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society. While previous estimates focused on estimating the damage if average temperatures were to rise by 2°C, this report shows that many of the adverse impacts of climate change will come at the 1.5°C mark.
- A number of climate change impacts could be avoided by limiting global warming to 1.5ºC.
- Limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require “rapid and far-reaching” transitions in land, energy, industry, buildings, transport, and cities. Global net human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) would need to fall by about 45% from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching ‘net zero’ around 2050. This means that any remaining emissions would need to be balanced by removing CO2 from the air.
- Arctic permafrost is melting decades earlier than the worst-case scenarios threatening to unlock vast amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres called on governments to stop building new coal plants by 2020, cut greenhouse emissions by 45% over the next decade and overhauling fossil fuel-driven economies with new technologies like solar and wind. He said the world is facing a grave climate emergency and even if Paris climate accord promises are fully met, the world still faces a catastrophic 3-degree temperature rise by the end of the century. Guterres urged to halve greenhouse emissions by 2030 and reach carbon neutrality by 2050. He suggested taxing major carbon-emitting industries and polluters, ending the subsidization of oil and gas, and halting the building of all new coal plants by next year. Cutting emissions to zero would be challenging and spell the end of petrol and diesel cars, as well as gas boilers. People will have to fly less, waste less and eat less meat. The average footprint for people in India is 1.73 metric tons; for the industrial nations is about 11 metric tons; worldwide carbon footprint is about 4 metric tons; The worldwide target to combat climate change is 2 metric tons.
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