A Pale Blue Dot: The Beginning…
“The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.” -Carl Sagan
For many years now I have been deeply concerned about how we, as a species, are adversely impacting the fate of our planet and all the other species with it. Our actions today threaten the delicately balanced ecosystem that has evolved over hundreds of millions of years. Our oceans are dying, tropical forests being wiped off the face of the planet, fresh water reserves drying up, desert cover increasing, glaciers are melting at an alarming rate; infact one of the largest calving happened in 2018 in Antarctica, green house gases building up in our atmosphere at a rate not seen in tens of thousands of years, we are literally destroying the habitats of thousands of species; in process making them extinct or bringing them close enough… I can literally fill the entire page, but I think this paints the picture. Not pretty, right?
The more I learned on these issues the more depressing it got; not just because of what is happening but more importantly because based on my interaction with people over the time I do not see the awareness, willingness and/or consensus on what the problem is (if there is any at all??) and if it can be solved, then how? On most occasions, when I bring this topic up in social gatherings the reaction is either a clueless stare or a “I don’t care because it won’t affect me” look. Some people on the other hand feel that they can not make any meaningful impact; the problem simply seems to be too big to tackle. On some other occasions there are people who demonstrate willful ignorance; they know it is a problem but they choose to look the other way. And then there is the last kind: “I don’t believe in it” kind. Fortunately I have not had a misfortune of meeting someone of that kind in person; I have seen them cropping up on social media though, more so in recent past, especially in the United States. And let me put this out now: If you are of this kind please stop reading NOW! I am not here to convince you otherwise. You are free to frame your opinions however you like but you can’t choose “your” facts. The truth does not change; facts do not change; even when nobody is shining light on them. And honestly I have run out of patience; after all I would not be debating with a flat earther or a person who does not believe in gravity. Climate change is that obvious, IF you believe in science. Period.
So what is the purpose of this series? The aim is to put out a series of posts that provide information on the subject, why should you care and more importantly what can we do (both individually and collectively) to address the challenge at hand. Another important reason is for my own sake: Impact of humanity on the earth’s ecosystem is an issue I have come to care about. Climate change is the biggest pie of the problem but there are several others which are closely linked: pollution, deforestation, over fishing etc. At the heart of all of them lies a recklessness in our attitude towards our planet. These posts are part of my own action items. Consider them as something on my todo list to help the planet!
Alright, before we move on to the next posts I will list some of the important climate facts/reality checks in this post. This is not an exhaustive list just some points that I think everyone should know:
- The world is warming up and it is primarily due to CO2 being dumped into the atmosphere by humans. Infact 17 of the 18 warmest years since official record keeping began in 1884 have all occurred since 2001 except for 1998:
- The amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is at its highest in over a million years. If we continue to dump carbon dioxide at the same rate as we are now this number will double by 2100 which means average global temperatures will rise by alteast 4°C. Projections show that such a world will be very very different than the one we live in right now. Entire coastal cities in many countries going under water, large parts of the world becoming uninhabitable due to extreme climate leading to civil unrest, wars etc., no summer sea ice in the Arctics, complete destruction of coral reefs and much more.
- A rise of 1°C or 2°C does not look very significant to us but we are talking about the planet. To put that in context, the Paris Climate agreement aims to limit this to 2°C. And to put this in even more context here is what are the impacts of a warming of 1.5°C v/s 2°C:
- How much time do we have? We are already 1°C warmer today from pre-industrial era. It is also extremely likely that we will overshoot 1.5°C. To keep it below 2°C will require a major shift in government policies and how we live currently:
- By the time you started reading this post and reached this point we lost about 240 hectares of rain forest cover. That is about 480 football fields! In one day we lose an area equal to New York City. Crazy right? These forests not only provide a carbon sink, help regulate the global weather patterns but also provide habitat to about 80% of world’s documented species. No points on guessing the impacts of losing these forests.
- Scientists estimate we are losing species at 1000 to 10000 times faster than the natural rate. Climate change is likely to be the major cause of species extinction in this century.
- Coral reefs are dying, fast. Infact if it is business as usual then no more coral reefs by 2100. Reasons include: acidification of our oceans due to absorption of CO2, over fishing etc.
- Climate change is not something that is coming in the future. It is here, happening right now. Just as one example “157 million more people experienced a heat wave in 2016 than in 2000. That heat and the injuries that can come from it cost the world 153 billion hours of labor”.
- The economic cost of not acting is enormous: trillions of dollars!
If you are depressed you are not alone. I know that we are up against a huge challenge; many might not realize or agree but I think that climate change is the biggest existential threat that we are collectively facing. And that is why we need to get our act together, fast. Many people (including me) feel that we are already past phase I of climate change. Phase I implies effects of climate change can be reversed by reducing emissions. We are now in Phase II which requires not only emission reduction but also actively removing CO2 from the atmosphere. Even for phase II it is essential to act fast and act smart. Phase III is doomsday and trust me you don’t want to be a witness to that. That is because the warming of planet is essentially self feeding. To give you an example: The polar ice caps reflect the sun’s rays back; as the planet warms and the ice melts less sun light is reflected back, trapping more heat which in turn melts more ice which leads to more heat absorption and so on. And to really mess things up, melting ice also thaws the permafrost that was underneath the ice. This releases not only CO2 but also methane (which roughly 86 times more powerful in trapping heat). Imagine earth on steroids.
To succeed we need both individual and collective actions. I will touch up on these in a later post in detail but I hate to break this right now: it won’t be as simple as changing your light bulb. In fact it was never as simple as that. Our societal setup rewards short sightedness. We tend to care about the results; not the way they are achieved. Ever wondered why there will be more plastic in the world’s oceans than there is fish by 2050? Or why majority of the fresh water aquifers are depleting? Or why almost a third of major fisheries are under threat of vanishing?
There is, however, still hope; renewable energy costs are dropping at a record pace and now are lower than fossil fuel costs in many parts of the world. There has been a big push towards renewable energy in the developing world. They know that they can not afford to ride the wave of development on how it was achieved in the west: cheap oil. Together, the “big three” developing economies, China, India, and Brazil, accounted for a record 63% of global investment in renewable energy in 2017. India is also cancelling commissioning of new coal plants as renewable energy costs keep declining. In 2017 it added more power-generation capacity from renewable sources than conventional ones. During the 2015 Paris Climate summit India also proposed an alliance of nations for making solar power, technology, and financing more accessible to different countries which resulted in forming of the International Solar Alliance (ISA), a non-profit treaty-based group of 121 countries promoting the use of solar energy. China is betting its energy future on renewables too! Last year for every dollar that the US spent China spent three. Among the developed economies Europe is collectively taking bold actions to cut emissions. Germany recently announced that they will shut down all of its coal powered plants over the next 19 years. And in the US, while the federal government withdrew from Paris accord, it seems that the cities and states have refused to go along with that madness and are infact leading the way in the fight against climate change. And this is not just good for the planet; it is good business. Clean energy sector provides for millions of jobs.
The first step in solving any problem is to first accept that there is a problem. Climate change is a challenge that needs us to come together collectively as a species, forget about our differences and unite to fix the mess that we made on this beautiful planet: the pale blue dot floating in vast space. What we do now determines the fate of the planet. We owe it not only to us, our future generations but all the other species that we share this wonderful world with: The only home that we have…
I leave you with the wise and powerful words of Carl Segan:
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.” -Carl Segan
Thank you for reading!
