The Most Complicated Problem In The World
Climate change will be the most complicated issue to tackle. According to a survey done on millennials, 48.8% said it is the hardest problem in the world. Frankly, I agree. We’ve known about climate change since around the early 19th century, yet we haven’t made much progress towards solving this. Each year seems to break some horrible record like the hottest year, or most CO2’s emitted. In this article, we’ll be discussing what climate change is, the factors causing this, and potential solutions.
What is Climate Change?
Climate change refers to how much the normal weather of an area changes over time — accounting for variables like precipitation, temperature, and wind patterns. Many people confuse this with global warming, however, they are slightly different. Global warming has to do with the rise in temperature, as a result of greenhouse gases collecting in the atmosphere.
The Main Issues + Potential Solutions:
First of all, population size directly correlates to an increase in CO2 emissions (more people = more emissions). The population of the world is steadily growing, and it is estimated that it will be at around 11 billion by 2100 (this is around 32% more than right now 🤯). It will probably be impossible to stop this growth except for slight possible declines due to the pandemic, but we can slow it down. We need to invest in education because it is proven that education slows population growth, BUT this population decrease will happen over the course of a few decades. Therefore, if we can solve overpopulation we can take down one of climate change’s main issues 👊🏽💥.
The next issue is our economic growth. It is shown that the more well off we are, the more emissions we produce. Although our economic growth has decreased the amount of those in extreme poverty, growth has become the main objective of many governments around the world particularly in manufacturing. Although the pandemic resulted in temporary declines in 2020 emissions, the advance of vaccines will push for a return back to the norm of increased production. It is highly unlikely rich countries will stop, and even if they did the developing countries would still continue.
Now we’re going to compare consumption vs efficiency, and how it relates to climate change.
The term “energy intensity” refers to how efficiently we utilize energy. For example, compare these two items: the first is an electric car, and the second is a gasoline car. The more efficient is the electric car, this is because they convert about 77% of energy compared to gasoline’s 12%-30%. More efficient = less energy used. Basically working to make things more efficient will allow for lower energy consumption. However, don’t get too excited as increasing efficiency will not be enough to stop climate change. This is because when products become more efficient, we like to use them more. As a result, the increased consumption could negatively affect climate change. Furthermore, the savings generated from using efficient products could cause consumers to shift spending towards other non-eco-friendly items.
Is it too late to stop climate change?
Luckily, it isn’t. Nevertheless, we must take action immediately. It seems like there isn’t much we can do to stop this crisis, and we just have to wait for advancements in technology to fix all of our problems. This isn’t the case. We can do many things like giving money to renewable energy sources, making non-eco-friendly items more expensive, and leaving nuclear power plants on longer.
TL;DR:
Here’s what we learned today:
- Climate change is referring to the change in weather compared to the normal weather in that area.
- Overpopulation and economic growth have a direct effect on climate change.
- Focus on reducing consumption and not just only efficiency.
- It isn’t too late to stop climate change.
Thanks for reading! I hope you learned something valuable today. Feel free to check out my Twitter @EthanSelvarajah if you want to talk. Hopefully, you enjoyed this article and learned from it.
