Millions of people are already suffering as a result of the catastrophic effects of climate change — from prolonged droughts in sub-Saharan Africa to tropical cyclones in Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. During the summer months of the Northern Hemisphere in 2018, communities from the Arctic Circle to Greece, Japan, Pakistan, and the USA experienced severe storms and wildfires that left hundreds dead.
While we are keenly aware of climate change and the impact it will have on our natural world, it is the devastation that is causing and will continue to cause humanity, making it an urgent human rights issue. It will consolidate and magnify existing inequalities. And its effects will continue to grow and worsen over time, wreaking havoc on present and future generations. That is why the government's failure to act on climate change in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence is likely to be a major violation of human rights in history.
The planet's climate is changing over time, with varying degrees of global warming.
However, the current warming period is occurring much faster than in any previous event. It has become clear that humanity has created the warmth of the last century by releasing greenhouse gases - often called thermal gases - to power our modern life. The highest levels of greenhouse gases have existed some 800,000 years ago. This rapid rise is a problem because it is changing our climate at a much faster rate for biodiversity to adapt.
Climate change includes not only rising temperatures, but also extreme weather events, rising sea levels, changing wildlife communities and habitats, and other impacts.
There is great scientific consensus that global warming is largely man-made: 97% of astronomers have reached this conclusion. One of their biggest concerns so far is the burning of fossil fuels - coal, gas and oil - which has increased the concentration of greenhouse gases - such as carbon dioxide - in our atmosphere. This, combined with other activities such as land clearing in agriculture, causes the average temperature of our planet to rise. In fact, scientists are convinced that there is a link between greenhouse gases and global warming as there is a link between smoking and lung cancer.
This is not the latest conclusion. Warnings about global warming began to make headlines after the 1980's. In 1992, 165 countries signed an international agreement, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). They have held annual meetings since then (called the “Party Conference” or COP), with the aim of formulating goals and strategies to mitigate climate change and adapt to its already visible results. Today, 197 countries are detained by the UNFCCC.
The effects of climate change are now visible, but they will only get worse. Global temperatures have reached nearly 1 ° C above pre-industrial levels. Every time the global warming is calculated the degree (or even less).
It is important to remember that no single list of the effects of climate change can be complete. It is very likely that heatwaves will appear more frequently and last longer, and that extreme weather events will be more intense and more common in many regions. The seas will continue to warm and stretch, and the mean sea level will continue to rise. All of this is going to happen, and it is starting to have a negative impact on a person's health.
The urgent need to tackle climate change has become even clearer with the release of a major report in October 2018 by the world's leading scientific climate change organization. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).Working to limit the average temperature range to 1.5 ° C, the IPCC states that for example we can: to reduce the number of people exposed to climate-related risks and to be impoverished to 2000 million by 2050; to protect 10 million people from sea-level hazards; reducing the global population caused by an increase in water pressure by up to 50%, or one in 25 people on the planet.
Perhaps most importantly, the IPCC report has given the world a clear deadline to prevent disaster: greenhouse gas emissions should be halved from their 2010 levels by 2030 to avoid reaching 1.5 ° C.If we take too long to do this, we will have to rely heavily on expensive technology that could have harmful effects on human rights. The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said that they must set realistic goals by 2020 to prevent the spread of air pollution, otherwise we “risk losing the point where we can avoid catastrophic climate change, with devastating consequences for humans and the environment. ”
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