Mitigating climate change

CLIMATOLOGISTS and other experts are saying the effects of global warming are already bringing harm to human communities and the natural world.

They add further temperature rises will have a devastating impact and more action on greenhouse gas emissions is urgently required.

Given that multiple factors contribute to climate change, multiple actions are therefore required to address climate change, which refers to long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns.

These shifts may be natural, but since the 1800s, experts say human activities have been the main driver of this significant variation of average weather conditions primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels (like coal, oil and gas), which produces heat-trapping gases.

And the number of people on our planet is one of those factors. Every additional person increases carbon emissions – the rich far more than the poor – and increases the number of climate change victims – the poor far more than the rich, according to experts.

They add that worldwide Gross Domestic Product per capita and population growth remained the strongest drivers of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion in the last decade.

Population growth affects the Earth’s ability to withstand climate change and absorb emissions, like through deforestation as land is converted for agricultural use to feed a growing human population.

Demographers say we are currently adding more than 80 million people a year to our 8.019 billion — an increase of 75,162,541 or 0.95 percent) from New Year’s Day 2023 – global population.

From January 2024, 4.3 births and 2.0 deaths were expected worldwide every second.

The UN projects without further action to address population growth, there will be two billion more people by 2050, and three-and-a-half billion more by 2100.

Warming of our atmosphere – whose effects will depend on how high and how fast the temperature rises – is now impossible to avoid, authorities say.

Global warming changes temperature patterns, causing severe weather events, heatwaves, droughts and floods.

Weather chasers say climate change is already shrinking glaciers and ice caps, altering the availability of fresh water.

This contributes to ocean acidification, destroying coral reefs and other aquatic ecosystems.

It makes places uninhabitable for some plants and animals, leading to extinctions and redistribution of species, threatening food production with alien pests and diseases.

We have seen bushfires, vegetation fires and floods in different countries while impacts on agriculture like through soil degradation and unseasonal weather are leading to unpredictable and unstable crop yields which experts argue are dangerous for the poorest populations.

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