VOL 20: Where Are We With Climate Change?
Climate Change! Most people refer to it as the CRISIS of our time, it cut across science, politics and technology. Bill Gates said in his book “there are two numbers you need to know about climate change, the first is 51 billion and the other is Zero." 51 billion is how many tons of greenhouse gases we add to the atmosphere every year, Zero is what we need to aim for in other to stop global warming and avoid the worst effects of Climate Change.
It all started in 1856 when Eunice Foote a female scientist, conducted an experiment by filling one glass tube with regular air and another with carbon dioxide, she put thermometers in them and placed them under the sun, and she noticed that the tube containing carbon dioxide got a lot hotter and stayed hot longer. She published her result, noting that “an atmosphere of that gas would give to our earth a high temperature.”
3 years later, in 1859, Edwin Drake discovered the first oil well in Western Pennsylvania. Years later, when America oil industry was celebrating its centennial, the physicist Edward Teller (one of the inventors of the atomic bomb) was invited to make a speech about the future of energy. He said, “we probably have to look for additional fuel supplies, because the extra carbon emitted from burning fossil fuels causes a greenhouse effect which would be sufficient to melt the ice cap and submerge New York.”
By 1965 scientists were confident enough to formally warn U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson about the upcoming climate crisis. There have been a lot of summits or meetings between governments since it emerge as a political issue in the 1970s, the recent one was COP26 held in Glasgow, Scotland last year.
Back in 2016, world leaders signed the so-called “Paris Agreement” and the goal of the agreement was to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees celsius, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels, which to be very honest will require economic and social transformation because it cut across all sectors. Even the toothbrush you use in cleaning your teeth is bad for the environment because they are made from polypropylene plastic and nylon, which comes from fossil fuels.
3 degrees celsius is what the world is afraid of getting to, because it will be catastrophic. Heatwaves, Droughts, Extreme precipitation and even Fire, this is what 3 degrees of warming will cause. Children born today are up to 7 times more likely to face extreme weathers than their grandparents. The world is getting hotter, Canada, United States, Kuwait, India, Madagascar have experienced scorching temperatures in recent years.
As the world shouts on renovating the transportation sector, it was shocking for me to know that this sector is just 4th on the list of how much greenhouse gases is emitted by the things we do. Less is known about the environmental effects of keeping cool, air-conditioning is one of the worst consumers of electricity, at least 7% of greenhouse gas emissions comes from cooling.
One funny fact is that the total electricity America uses for its air conditioning is equivalent to the total electricity consumption in Africa. A data I got from Bill Gates recent book titled “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster" gives a breakdown of all human activities that produce greenhouse gases;
Making Things (cement, steel, plastic)……………………31%
Plugging In (electricity)……………………………………………27%
Growing Things (plant, animals)…………………………….19%
Getting Around (planes, truck, cargo ships)……………16%
Keeping Warm and Cool (heating, cooling and refrigeration)…7%
We now have a world economy today that depend on fossil fuels for most of its energy, a third of it from oil. It’s a great irony that the substances that helped us achieve this level of development are now the ones that endanger the future of civilisation as we know it, should I say we are suffering the sins of the industrial revolution?
However what we do to limit emissions in the next decade is critical to our future, from companies and countries, to families and individuals we all have roles to play towards net-zero, which will help slow climate change.
P.S: I can’t complete it in a single article, the last part will be released next week.
Until next week, Happy New Year Folks.
Enjoy the weekend.