Climate future in human hands

Normally, the Earth’s atmosphere acts like a cosy blanket, keeping the right amount of warmth around us. But lately, humans have been making changes that are like putting an extra-thick blanket on our planet — making it too warm. 

When the oceans get warmer, they make bigger storms like hurricanes and typhoons. As the ice at the North and South Poles melts because it’s too warm, it makes the sea level rise, which can cause floods in places where people live. 

On the back cover of Gwynne Dyer’s latest book Intervention Earth are these words: “Glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising and weather is becoming more extreme. Most of us know the solution: cut our carbon emissions. There’s only one problem — we aren’t doing it.” 

I agree. We continue to excessively spew out carbon like there’s no tomorrow. 

In my July 18 “Hope for climate cause” letter responding to a Gwynne Dyer column, I wrote of precision fermentation — a developing technology that would enable half the land now used for farming to be returned to nature. A graph in Intervention Earth depicts humanity making up 36% of the world’s mammals by total mass, livestock 60% and mammalian wildlife a mere 4%. 

In Intervention Earth, Dyer also details how human activity has massively increased atmospheric concentrations of CO2 since the dawn of the industrial age — a massive increase by 1990, and more than doubling that during the 33 years since. Checking the rapidly rising atmospheric CO2 readings from the NOAA’s Mauna Loa Observatory verifies this. When I was born in 1932, ice core samples reveal the atmospheric CO2 level was 308 parts per million (ppm) and rising at less than 1ppm yearly. Presently, Mauna Loa readings reveal an annual increase over 3ppm and the level now at 422ppm — the highest level in 14 million years. Scary stuff? 

Dyer’s book examines many intervention ideas not mentioned here. 

All humanity must immediately reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. 

Bob Hughes