These Two Charts Will Change Your Life
What do all these images have in common?
Take a guess, I’ll wait.
Answer: They are the result of human-caused climate change.
Why should you care?
Maybe you’re lucky.
Maybe you are living a comfortable life in a rich, developed country.
Where you live, spring is lovely and you can see the flowers in full bloom. Summer is coming and you look forward to your holidays at the beach.
If this sounds like you, chances are you have a high carbon footprint:
Did you know that the carbon footprint of average American is ten times that of the average Indian (source: Wikipedia)?
So What?
Well, since humans have started messing up with the atmosphere, land and oceans on a big scale, the planet took notice and started warming up:
Scientific evidence is clear:
Climate change augurs a wide range of adverse impacts. These impacts range from the seemingly innocuous, like more potent poisonous plants, to cataclysmic extreme weather events, like continent-sized superstorms. Other serious threats include widespread coastal flooding, storm-surges, heatwaves, drought, wildfires, mass migration, famine, disease, conflict, anoxia, species extinction and ultimately human extinction.
This is happening now, with the worst to come in the next few decades. So if you’re planning to have a long life, or have children, this will change your life.
This is why leaders of 195 countries in the world formalised the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015, aiming to:
- Hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C (above pre-industrial levels).
- Pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C.
A paper was recently published with a roadmap to make the Paris goals a reality:
The bottom line: To hit the Paris climate goals without geo-engineering, the world has to reduce emissions in half in the 2020s, then again in the 2030s, then again in the 2040s.
These are just some of the things that are required by this roadmap:
- Reduce all emissions from food production to zero
- Coal is phased out in rich countries and declines sharply elsewhere by 2030
- Cars with internal combustion engines “will have become rare on roads worldwide” by 2040
- Scale up massively carbon sequestration technology
So:
Make no mistake,
the challenge ahead is monumental.
But there are solutions.
What can you do?
Climate change is a collective problem, and it requires a collective solution. Solving it is up to everyone. Me. You:
What is really going to make a difference
is for all of us to change
the way we act
and improve our habits
Quoting Dr Paul Johnston, Honorary Research Fellow at Greenpeace:
Think about how you’re living your life; how much waste you’re producing, how far you’re travelling, what food you eat, what you’re buying — it’s all significant and it can make a difference.
Your Smartphone Can Help
I’m building a free mobile app to help you live more sustainably:
With this app you can track the CO2 emissions from your food, transport and energy usage. You can also learn how to reduce your carbon footprint, and challenge your friends and family to do the same.
Here is a preview:
Join me and help driving collective change:
- Share this article with friends, family, neighbours, everyone!
- Send me some feedback, comments and ❤️.
- Follow me! I’m @biz84 on Twitter.
- Follow the official EcoBuddy Facebook and Twitter accounts.
- Sign up for the EcoBuddy newsletter:
Read Next: Want to live more sustainably? Meet the EcoBuddy app
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