What’s the relationship between Climate Change and Sustainability?
What's the relationship between Climate Change and Sustainability?
Since the industrial revolution, the amount of carbon dioxide and its
equivalents in the atmosphere has spiked way more than it was in the
pre-industrial era and this spike in emissions has been linked to human
activities such as deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels. The
rate at which humans are emitting this carbon is way faster than the
rate at which the earth can sequester.
This process has made excess carbon emissions remain in the atmosphere thereby capturing and storing more heat from the sun, which then leads to a rise in the earth’s temperature. This temperature rise leads to climate change which is detrimental to life on earth. Due to climate change, sea levels are now rising really fast which will eventually flood coastal areas and render the inhabitants homeless. It is also related to extreme weather conditions like extreme drought. In summary, climate change, if not controlled, will lead to conditions that can kill humans.
How Sustainability can Solve Climate Change.
Since the reason we got here in the first place was because of human activities, the only way we can solve the climate change crisis is by adjusting the activities that caused the problem. This is where sustainability comes in. Sustainability enables us to assess our activities as a society and as individuals using three pillars: the economy, the society and the environment. For every product to be manufactured or services to be rendered, it is essential that they have advantages in all of these sectors, meaning profit must be made, the society must benefit from that product or service, and the impact on the environment should be positive.
Why Humans and the Economy are very important to solving Climate Change.
A lot of people look at climate change as only an environmental
challenge and therefore, everything should be done to save the
environment at the expense of the other pillars. But this is not right.
The only reason we are concerned about climate change in the first place
is to keep the earth safe for future generations, in other words, to
save humans. The earth will not die from the consequences of climate
change, we humans are the ones going to suffer the consequences. So in
our solution to the crisis, we must ensure we consider humans, as well
as the environment, and of course, without economic power, there cannot
be an improvement in living standards, so the economy is very essential
in our solution to climate change.
