Opinion: Our Solvable Climate Crisis

If you’ve been outside this summer, you know how hot it’s been lately. The heat and humidity has stretched long into the evening hours, making 2024 on track to be the hottest summer on record. And yet it seems like every year we breeze past that record without a second thought, without considering the world in which our children will live in the not too distant future.

It’s worth exploring the direct impact that climate change will have on our everyday lives if it continues on its current course. More frequent droughts will cause widespread food and water shortages, sea levels rising will make many coastal cities uninhabitable, and severe weather events like hurricanes, floods, and wildfires will become more frequent and severe.

The problem of climate change is so huge it’s hard for us to fathom sometimes. It seems so far away that we imagine some future civilization will solve it for us or some outright deny climate change is real in the first place. Others see the inaction of leaders and give into nihilism that climate change is inevitable and there’s no point in making the effort to stop it.

What we often forget in these polarized times is what humanity at our best is capable of. We forget that when we can unite around a commonly held belief, that we should leave Earth a better place than we found it, we can do incredible things. 

Take leaded gasoline. For decades oil companies used lead in gasoline to make combustion engines run more efficiently and save money. These companies knew the dangers that lead posed, but used it anyway and lied to the public to improve their bottom line. But through the work of scientists, we found out how dangerous the effects of lead poisoning on the human mind could be and countries around the world came together to ban its use. Within a few decades, the amount of lead in children steeply declined and our health as a species greatly improved because of it.

Or remember the hole in Earth’s ozone layer. In the 1980s, scientists made a worrying discovery that Earth’s ozone layer was severely depleted from its natural state. Without a complete ozone layer, Earth becomes much more vulnerable to UV radiation from the sun. This could in-turn cause a cascade of effects to our climate and ecosystems, and the cause was identified as CFCs, a human-made chemical used in refrigeration, aerosols, and AC units.

Only a few years later, the Montreal Protocol, a global treaty to phase out CFC use was ratified by every country on Earth. We as a species united around a common goal, and the hole in the ozone layer was able to repair itself over the next few decades.

Just as we were able to come together to address the challenges of lead and the ozone layer, now is the time to unite around tackling an even bigger crisis, climate change.

The need for action is urgent. It will only become harder to stem the flow of carbon emissions the longer we wait, and giving in to defeatism or chasing short term profits is not the way forward. Even if we’re past the point of being able to fully return Earth to its natural state, our actions now could still improve the lives of billions of people in the future.

Given the scale of climate change, solutions will need to range from the international to the local level, and while individuals can do their part, the main reductions in emissions will need to come from the top down. We have to reduce our current emissions with cleaner energy plants like solar, wind, hydroelectric, and nuclear while working to remove the excessive greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere with technology like carbon capture. 

Through proper regulation, we can flip the financial model of pollution. In its current state, companies are allowed to emit as much as they want and ignoring the problem saves them money. By implementing a carbon tax or other such system, we can make reducing climate change both the environmentally-friendly and profitable way to do business. There are plenty of ideas out there, we just need to be willing to try them out.

We can’t give in to the mentality that climate change is insurmountable or that corporations will do the right thing on their own. This problem is fixable, we’ve done it before and we can do it again. It will not be easy, but we have to take action now if we want our planet to stay habitable for centuries to come. 

Climate change does not care about political parties. It affects us all, and it will take a united effort to tackle it. We need to rise above partisan politics and recognize that protecting our planet is a common goal. We must demand bold action from our leaders and make sustainable choices in our own lives. 

The time to act is now.