C is for climate change
By Bhaskar Anand and Muhammad Qasim
Bhaskar Anand
Muhammad Qasim
Politicians often ignore scientific admonitions for exigent climate action to mitigate the severity of climate change's impacts and may perhaps envisage it as “climate mythology.” But the recent cataclysmic events such as wildfires in Greece, Turkey, Algeria and the U.S., as well as floods in Germany, China and India are perfect evidence of the climate crisis and its devastating consequences.
The sixth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), “Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis” published in August, said “The world will face a series of irreversible climate tipping points if we do not make significant and immediate reductions in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions.”
We initiated climate change by increasing anthropogenic activity, and now nature is retaliating with devastating consequences like radical weather episodes. These upshots have been an open secret ever since five decades ago. However, insufficient, or should we say the lack of climate action, turned it into a distressing reality.
The foremost reason behind this situation is collective climate illiteracy or the lack of awareness. Climate awareness and education are the need of the hour at this time, as they are the only means to escape impending human extinction. Now is the time to initiate comprehensive awareness efforts to teach our future generations that C is for climate and E represents earth, rather than C is for cat and E is for elephant, as our forefathers taught us.
A vast majority of individuals believe that they have no role in the origins of global warming and climate change.
All climate insensitivity is natural, as most of us have a similar response to potential threats. Our response to a potential threat depends on the presence of specific characteristics/indicators such as a visible, historical precedent or an immediate, direct personal impact caused by an enemy, and simple causality. On the contrary, climate change is invisible, unprecedented, drawn-out, caused by collective action, and has indirect causality.
Hence, we do not feel the need to act on this potential threat immediately. What if we were informed that all global warming were being caused by terrorist groups, such as ISIS or Boko haram, to destabilize the climate? Obviously, we would consider the same situation as a direct threat and declare it a matter of national security. All insensitivity is propagated from our own thought process and we need to change it if we want our next generation not to face an extinction-level threat.
This year in April, we had the opportunity to attend an event, called Youth4Climate, organized together by the Embassy of Italy in Seoul and the Global Green Growth Institute. The latter mainly focuses on climate awareness. The event was a pre-advocacy campaign of the United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference (COP26) jointly hosted by Italy and the United Kingdom, scheduled to be held in Glasgow, Scotland, from Oct. 31 to Nov. 12.
This pre-advocacy event included the screening of a documentary, “The Climate Limbo,” by Elena Brunello, and a debate focusing on the need for climate cognizance. The documentary featured climate refugees who left their native place due to the climate crisis and were seeking asylum.
The recent extreme weather events, such as sweltering Canada and drowning Germany, are prima facie shreds of evidence that suggest climate change is no longer a hoax, but rather a harsh reality of the 21st century.
In our opinion, we need climate change realism to fight as the Perses of climate change is knocking on our doors. Nations have boundaries and territories, but the climate has none. It can only be fought with a firm mindset, "Be accountable for preventing the extinction of the human race."
Our daily spending patterns create market dynamics that result in disproportionate greenhouse gas emissions. To reduce emissions of greenhouse gas, we must change our daily spending patterns, eating habits, consumer buying habits, and, more specifically, our lifestyle.
Zero carbon emissions and coexistence with the environment are essential for cracking, combating, and halting the looming scenario of projected severe disasters dubbed, "climate change." Additionally, we as individuals must admit that climate change is a reality and consider it a direct threat to us, so as to join hands to offer some collective efforts to combat climate change.
In sum, in order to have a collective and coherent effort to combat climate change from one and all, we need to raise our climate literacy.
Bhaskar Anand (https://www.bhaskaranandjha.com; abhaskar@hanyang.ac.kr) is a doctoral student working in the field of air quality and material application at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Hanyang University. Muhammad Qasim (engrqasim00@hanyang.ac.kr) earned a doctoral degree and worked in the field of waste water remediation at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Hanyang University.