Our crumbling climate

The last century has seen a drastic rise in average global temperatures and unforeseen increases in the prevalence of natural disasters. Almost all scientists and experts attribute climate change to be the cause of the intensified weather and climate conditions. According to NASA, 97% of scientists support the existence of global warming. However, there are still a few scientists around the world who don’t believe in climate change or claim that climate change is unrelated to human activity. Almost all the scientists who don’t believe or think it’s unrelated to human activity are the same scientists who are backed by fossil fuel companies and corporations that benefit from the production and sales of the same fossil fuels that are causing the climate crisis.

Scientists like James Hansen believe that rising temperatures will lead to sea levels being several meters higher and the planet being bombarded by “superstorms” by the end of the century. His claim is backed by the World Health Organization, which claims that Between 2030-2050, there will be approximately 250,000 more climate change-related deaths each year, and that’s on the optimistic side when compared to the numbers proposed by an article published by sciencealert.com, which estimate a death toll closer to 1 billion fatalities by the turn of the century, which seems like a nonsensical number to most people. Still, when you consider all of the effects of climate change, it makes more sense. Effects like more infectious diseases from a climate better suited to sustain the natural development of viruses. Environmental disasters like superstorms, rising sea levels, droughts, hurricanes, and massive ramifications for food producers.

These ramifications are related to the droughts and rising sea levels. Droughts make growing food farming more expensive and, therefore, food more costly because farmers rely on rain to water their plants. Aside from that issue, though, is also the matter of infectious disease and its detriments to livestock. According to an article published by the CDC last year, rising sea levels will force carrier insects like ticks and mosquitoes to migrate farther inland, which puts more people and livestock at risk of various ailments.

The following is a brief list of some of the diseases that come with climate change listed in the aforementioned CDC article: anthrax, Lyme disease, plague, rabies, salmonella/salmonellosis, and the West Nile virus.

For individuals like us, we can’t do anything to stop or prevent climate change. The systems we live by are too deeply ingrained in environmental devastation and the powers that be deem such monumental changes as necessary to stop climate change as too radical to be realistically implemented. All that can be done now on an individual level is to prepare and educate yourself for what is to come and vote for and support those who try to stop climate change because we need to try and stop it to even slow it.