We’ve all heard the words “climate change” at least once in our lifetime. While some of us truly understand the significance of this phrase, the rest just brush it under the thick carpet of ignorance.
Climate change, according to the internet, is defined as “global warming driven by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases and the resulting large-scale shifts in weather patterns.”
In simple words, our lust for money and power is literally killing this planet — slowly but surely — and causing dramatic shifts in the normal functioning of this blue blob known as ‘Planet Earth.’
Many parts of Earth will become dangerously hot while others get enveloped by the rising sea, thanks to the melting ice caps.
Such a drastic change will transform the way people currently live. We will face massive water and food shortages.
Regardless of wealth distribution, everyone will suffer; however, the countries that may not have the resources to adapt will suffer the most as higher temperatures and erratic weather conditions will make growing food more difficult, and we’d need more resources to keep the general population fed.
At the poles, ice is quickly melting. The animals that thrive here, mainly the polar bear in the Arctic and penguins in the Antarctic, are losing the very foundation they stand upon. This melting has slowly sparked off the increase of sea levels across the world.
As permafrost melts, methane and other greenhouse gases escape, thereby, worsening and accelerating global warming. Further, scientists have discovered evidence of the existence of ancient microbes, bacteria, and viruses under the permafrost. Thus, as permafrost slowly disintegrates, humankind will be faced with yet another biological danger.
Industrial Revolution [1]
The Earth has been warming up slowly since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s when we humans began burning up coal, oil, and other fossil fuels to power our inefficient but functional machines. These same machines brought us to where we are right now, but the environment bore the brunt of its cost.
Although the Industrial Revolution helped in revolutionising modern technology as we know it, it also sparked off a chain reaction that exponentially increased our dependency on fossil fuels which stands true even today.
The average global temperature has risen by nearly 1 degree celsius since the Industrial Revolution began in 1750.
Many industrialised countries such as New Zealand, the United States and the United Kingdom, to name a few, have built up their economies on the backbone of fossil fuels and non-renewable energy. What’s worse is that many developing countries are aiming to do the same in order to boost their economy and uplift their population.
Such a practice only accelerates climate change.
Now since we grasp the basic meaning of climate change, let’s move onto the causes.
Causes [2]
The most widely known causes of climate change are:
Deforestation: The widespread felling of trees across the world removed the only warriors we have in this fight against climate change. When trees are chopped down and burnt, the carbon they contain is released into the atmosphere. Since trees act as a natural filter, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is left unchecked with dwindling numbers of these.
Fossil fuels: Thanks to the Industrial Revolution, mankind quickly made advances in the technological field, using fossil fuels. Although these fossil fuels provide the necessary energy required to power our machines, they are extremely harmful to the environment.
Intensive Agriculture: This method of agriculture releases nitrogen dioxide and methane into the atmosphere which is harmful for the environment.
A Scorched Earth
Climate change feeds the growth of wildfires around the world.
Forest fires are an outcome of decades of negligence toward the environment.
Think of forest fires as a chemical reaction.
You need perfect conditions for an accelerated forest fire.
These conditions are lower precipitation rates and warmer air temperatures in areas susceptible to forest fires. Combine this with dried out vegetation, strong winds, a bolt of lightning or careless humans, and we now have the perfect recipe for disaster.
Only 4% of forest fires are started naturally. The rest are due to human related activities or arson.
As the Earth’s global average temperature rises, moisture is drawn out from plants and vegetation, creating a perfect matchbox condition that invites forest fires. Couple this with strong winds and lightning strikes to put the entire ecosystem in danger.
Australia is the land of kangaroos, koalas, big spiders, and destructive forest fires. It has suffered immensely in the past year owing to these fires.
Large areas of land have been covered in soot, ash, and the burned remains of living animals.
Spanning nearly 10 million hectares, this wasteland is larger than Scotland.
In the region of New South Wales, nearly 5 million hectares of forest burned down while 1.2 million hectares of vegetation was scorched near Victoria.
These fires are so large that they superheat the air around them, and cause dry lightning strikes, which keep the fire sustained. Strong winds help carry the fire which further causes more damage.
Thousands of homeowners lost their homes to this fire while scores of rural towns have been impacted by Australia’s bushfires.
According to the University of Sydney’s researchers, an estimated nearly 800 million animal deaths occured in the region of New South Wales alone, and a whopping billion nationwide.
These numbers are a result of animals, reptiles, or birds killed directly by the fire, or due to loss of food and water.
The cute, eucalyptus munching marsupials known as koalas have lost nearly 30% of their habitat and experts have raised concerns regarding their dwindling environment.
Firefighters from around the world worked alongside Australian firefighters to control the blaze, evacuate, and rehabilitate injured/at risk animals and earned the respect of not only the Australian Government, but of the entire world.
California - The Inferno State [6]
Perhaps the most significant forest fire of the United States in recent times is that of California.
2020 was California’s worst year for forest fires with nearly 4.5 million hectares of land being burned down during the blaze.
The internet was flushed with harrowing images of blazing fires and mansions burning down in the state of California. The constant suppression of forest fires created an unusually large supply of fuel for these fires, and this erupted in one of the largest fires known in California’s history.
Firefighters poured in from Australia, Canada, and Mexico, joining their American counterparts in combating this major fire.
As expected, climate change also caused inconsistent rainfall patterns and drought conditions which played a major role in this giga-fire, and cost the state 12 billion dollars, out of which 10 billion dollars amounted to property damage and the rest towards fire suppression.
Scientists and environmentalists predict that with growing temperatures, the worst is yet to come.
Currently, wildfires are spreading through parks situated near Athens and in parts of Turkey, forcing thousands of people to flee.
Greece has seen the eruption of 58 wildfires, which has burned away nearly 250,000 hectares of land, in the past month alone. However, in this isolated case, climate change was not entirely responsible. The Greek Forest Guard failed to contain these fires due to underfunding and lack of coordination. They failed to mount an operation to diminish these fires in a timely manner and the expanse of damage is an extension of this failure.
In regions of Evia and Attica, aerial firefighting support was virtually absent and most people saw their homes burn to the ground.
Turkey’s wildfires are being described as the worst in decades and the inferno is currently sweeping through the country’s southern coast.
Conclusion
As seen in almost all cases, the underlying cause for all unnatural and lethal environmental anomalies is climate change.
Not only forest fires, but also dying coral reefs, melting of the ice caps, and global temperature rise have climate change as the main underlying root cause.
Although it is heartwarming to see the world community come together in times of crisis, it is simply a knee jerk reaction to neglect, carelessness, and inefficiency of governments or multinational corporations that have taken no effort to prevent environmental destruction.
It is imperative for us as humans to make a conscious effort to slow down the impending doom — we only have a little time to mend our ways.
Article by: Vibhav D
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