Climate scientists, biologists, engineers and others with expertise
have been speaking and writing about our changing planet for a long
time. My own work has focused on how we'll figure out a way to come to
terms with billions more people, limited resources and more extreme
extremes. Droughts will be worse. Floods more severe. Storms
increasingly intense.
I've often felt like a modern Cassandra, writing and speaking about the dramatic and unprecedented planetary shifts taking place due to short-sighted policy choices. Deforestation, the burning of fossil fuels, and the ways we use water and produce food inevitably do take a toll on the environment, our health and security. As a marine scientist, I observed firsthand how the pH of oceans has been changing along urban coasts in a process called acidification due to excess emissions.
The evidence of climate change has been all around us for a long time. Protecting people and Earth's co-inhabitants from its most devastating impacts will require institutional reckoning and action.
Doomsday scenarios may generate clicks and sell advertisements, but they always fail to convey that science is nuanced. Arbitrary "time left to apocalypse" predictions are not evidence based and the story of climate change doesn't fit neatly into brief bullet points competing for your attention in today's saturated media environment. Stoking panic and fear offers a false narrative that can overwhelm readers, leading to inaction and hopelessness.
When I worked on Capitol Hill 13 years ago, I faced a cacophony of staffers and lawmakers choosing inaction on the assumption that climate change wasn't real. Today many of the same people point to the dire predictions dominating the news and shrug off better policies with the excuse that the world is ending anyway.
If history teaches us anything, it's that humans have a penchant for anticipating our End Times. Ancient mythologies from cultures all around the world describe catastrophic floods and religious cults continue to recruit followers with predictions of death by comet or solar flare.
Earth isn't ending in 12 years. It didn't end at Y2K or when the Mayan calendar predicted the collapse of civilization in 2012.
Earth, as a whole, will be okay—for at least another few billion years. What's less settled is how humans and the rest of biodiversity on the planet will fare in the decades and centuries to come. That's up to us and I hope we work to highlight hope over Armageddon.
The world will end one day, but not today. And not tomorrow. And not in 2030. Earth will continue to change, but we're not necessarily doomed. Yet.
Read more at: No, Climate Change Will Not End the World in 12 Years - Scientific American Blog Network
For additional information, including advertising rates - e-mail:Freeplanet@protonmail.com
I've often felt like a modern Cassandra, writing and speaking about the dramatic and unprecedented planetary shifts taking place due to short-sighted policy choices. Deforestation, the burning of fossil fuels, and the ways we use water and produce food inevitably do take a toll on the environment, our health and security. As a marine scientist, I observed firsthand how the pH of oceans has been changing along urban coasts in a process called acidification due to excess emissions.
The evidence of climate change has been all around us for a long time. Protecting people and Earth's co-inhabitants from its most devastating impacts will require institutional reckoning and action.
Doomsday scenarios may generate clicks and sell advertisements, but they always fail to convey that science is nuanced. Arbitrary "time left to apocalypse" predictions are not evidence based and the story of climate change doesn't fit neatly into brief bullet points competing for your attention in today's saturated media environment. Stoking panic and fear offers a false narrative that can overwhelm readers, leading to inaction and hopelessness.
When I worked on Capitol Hill 13 years ago, I faced a cacophony of staffers and lawmakers choosing inaction on the assumption that climate change wasn't real. Today many of the same people point to the dire predictions dominating the news and shrug off better policies with the excuse that the world is ending anyway.
If history teaches us anything, it's that humans have a penchant for anticipating our End Times. Ancient mythologies from cultures all around the world describe catastrophic floods and religious cults continue to recruit followers with predictions of death by comet or solar flare.
Earth isn't ending in 12 years. It didn't end at Y2K or when the Mayan calendar predicted the collapse of civilization in 2012.
Earth, as a whole, will be okay—for at least another few billion years. What's less settled is how humans and the rest of biodiversity on the planet will fare in the decades and centuries to come. That's up to us and I hope we work to highlight hope over Armageddon.
The world will end one day, but not today. And not tomorrow. And not in 2030. Earth will continue to change, but we're not necessarily doomed. Yet.
Read more at: No, Climate Change Will Not End the World in 12 Years - Scientific American Blog Network
For additional information, including advertising rates - e-mail:Freeplanet@protonmail.com
