Has Time Run Out to Save Ourselves from the Climate Crisis?
There’s hope that a window of opportunity remains open. The stats tell a different story.
In May, temperatures hit a national record-high of 52.3 degrees Celsius (126.1 Fahrenheit), in New Delhi, India. The brutal heatwave is another indicator that the climate crisis has begun. And the clock is ticking for us to do something about it. That there is a proverbial ‘ticking clock’, if you will, owes itself to the argument that there’s still time for us to reverse the worst impacts of climate change.
2030 is seen as a crucial date in the ‘save ourselves from the climate crisis’ calendar. This is because, should bold, transformative action take place in the next six years, there is a possibility that we can keep the global average temperature below 1.5 degrees Celsius (°C).
The 1.5°C target is a threshold set by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that must not be exceeded to avoid the catastrophic impacts of warming above 1.5°C. To give a sense of just how bad things could get, a recent paper predicts that should global warming hit 2°C, a billion people will die in the next century.
We are sleepwalking into a world of unfathomable levels of suffering. And yet, the fact the global average temperature…
