Humans and Climate change: The Introduction

Humans have been a part of Earth’s history for around 0.004%, which is roughly about 200,000 years. As a rapidly evolving species, we moved from hunting and gathering to farming, the pace of this development was set about 12000 years ago, the climate pattern made reliable changes in seasons to feed people. It was our very first step towards science and knowledge. Slowly and steadily we started gaining more and more knowledge and the world of science began. In the 1800s the Industrial Revolution was seeded and we started making machines that were now fastening the growth of humans exponentially. To make these machines work we needed fuel. It was during this period where we discovered the most abundant fossil fuel buried under the Earth for about 300 million years that is “Coal.”

With an abundance of coal deposits, humans excavated tonnes and tonnes of carbon that was deposited before our species appeared. During this time, factories were built, to produce goods such as textiles, iron, and chemicals on a large scale. The steam-engine was invented, which could do more work than men or animals, and canals and railways were built, to transport goods and materials for manufacturing. The Industrial Revolution created a huge demand for coal, to power new machines such as the steam-engine. In 1750, Britain was producing 5.2 million tons of coal per year. By 1850, it was producing 62.5 million tons per year – more than ten times greater than in 1750.

Coal was not only used as a fuel but the source to generate energy like electricity and heat. This was the beginning to disrupt the climate of the earth. We began burning coal at unimaginable rates leading to an increased amount of CO2 in air eventually warming the planet. It is estimated that humans would manage to warm the planet by 3°C by 2100. Past 10,000 years data shows over 1°C rise in temperature and our today’s estimation shows three times increase in temperature within 100 year. The process that took thousands of years is deduced to 50-100 years.

Climate change isn’t a new thing for the earth. it has experienced numerous climate changes before, some of them have led to mass extinction too. But climate change today is new because our civilization is new to earth. We have changed the form of climate due to our activities. Our dependency on the artificial world is creating distance from the natural world. But is it just about the planet? The answer is “No.”  This is the common mistake we make. It’s more about us than the planet itself because the earth has experienced and managed to survive and raise new life after climate changes which we have studied in history. If we carry our activities without changing the course, we may face a climate never seen before and even irreversible in the coming future.

We are hurtling towards the day Where climate change could be irreversible, 5% of global species will become extinct, sea levels are rising at a rate never seen before. By hearing all these gloom and doom messages are we taking action on climate change? the answer is “No.” All these dooming messages are making us vulnerable to take action. And why is that happening? Let us know.

According to psychologists the fear of a devastating future and the guilt after ruining our environment is withdrawing people from taking action against it. Our mind tries to think of something else that makes us feel better instead of setting us into fear. This psychology is of everyone, right? we all step back when we are in fear and that makes us think of “somebody else can deal with it.” Hence, We need to change the way we think about climate change.

At first glance climate change is very complicated, there is no single source that contributes to it. In the upcoming articles, we would know about the source and solutions to tackle the problem.