We Have To Care
On October 7, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued an urgent report on the state of global warming. The laws of the physical universe say that we can keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels but we’re quickly running out of time. As in, we may reach that 1.5 in as little as a dozen years at the rate we’re spewing emissions. And the consequences will be disastrous. To correct course, we’ll need to cut emissions by half before 2030, and go carbon-neutral by 2050, the report says. That gives us three decades to transform our energy production, adopt renewable energy, and leverage carbon capture techniques. We’ll have to change our behavior as individuals, too as this is an issue for all of us to solve.
There are signs that what we do makes a difference. For example, deploying technologies like electric cars on massive scales can help and when we consider that in 2016 alone, Los Angeles cut its emissions by 11 percent, the equivalent of yanking 700,000 cars off the road we can make an impact by paying serious attention to this global issue. On our journey we can all make a difference with the choices that we make, and we cannot leave this to “others” to take care of it. Let’s all put an effort into this topic and learn what we need to do to make an impact. By so doing we can keep this beautiful world around for centuries to come. After all we are the ones who got us into this situation thus we have to find a way out of it.