The IPCC (Intergovenmental panel on climate change) released a new report yesterday.
Entire island nations will be “rendered uninhabitable”.
Millions of people to be displaced by floods and rising seas.
Uncertainties over global food supplies and severe impacts on human health across the world.
More floods, more droughts and more intense heatwaves and as human emissions of greenhouse gases continue to rise, natural ecosystems come under extreme stress with “significant” knock-on effects for societies.
“Changes in the availability of food, fuel, medicine, construction materials and income are possible as these ecosystems are changed,” says the report.
If you read these as headlines and spend a moment to actually imagine the impact of these events, of the breakdown of global distribution and fuel supplies, on your own existence, in your own community they’re pretty alarming.
Now consider that all of the warnings highlighted above come not from yesterday‘s blockbuster IPCC report on the impacts of climate change, but from the very first one started in 1988 and published in 1990.
The IPCC has been warning us for 25 years now about the SEVERE impact Climate change is having, and will continue to have on the planet we live on.
Despite this, since the commission began in 1990, annual global greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels have gone up 60 per cent.
Looting on the streets of Clapham – Ben Tilley
We humans have created a very complicated system of providing our basic needs of shelter, heat, nourishment, communication and security. All of these things are greatly threatened by climate change. Countries with a recent knowledge and sense of responsibility in providing these things for themselves will be resilient. Western society has for generations reliant on ever more remote means to provide its basic needs and would suffer greatly with the disruption climate change will continue to cause. Imagine the conflict, the hardship.. the uncertainty..
..and that’s before we even begin to talk about “Major negative effects on biodiversity”, “One third to a half of the mass of mountain glaciers disappearing within 100 years”, and how, if global average temperatures rise between 1.5C and 2.5C as they are set to then “approximately 20 to 30 per cent of plant and animal species assessed so far are likely to be at increased risk of extinction”. (IPCC 2007)
Establishing sustainable systems and resilient communities is good for everything on the planet and much easier NOW than it will be in a future where we are further limited by the effects of climate change.
Let’s make the changes NOW while we have CHOICES rather than being forced to change in a future where we no longer have choices.
Great change is inevitable. It can be a change that we choose now or it will be a change that just happens.
We still have the ability to change and effect climate change. In the future we will not. We are already suffering the consequences. We need to make changes NOW to stop things from getting very, very much worse.
This is happening. Read the reports. Make halting climate change a personal priority. Take time to imagine the implications on your own life and communities. Talk about it. Vote accordingly. Talk to your local Councillors. Take steps to make your communities more self sufficient and resilient to climate change and its related disruptions.. because we can’t rely on governments. It is US who need to enact this change. INDIVIDUALS and communities.
The leaders of all big businesses are INDIVIDUALS. World leaders are INDIVIDUALS.
Talk to people. Encourage them to become a part of the solution. Be a part of the solution yourself.
The Undiscovered Creature Project 