Can we actually solve the climate crisis? Cameron Sim,St John’s School

The climate crisis has become a staple in the headlines in recent years and research continues to hit the news sites about how we can help fix the climate crisis, but is it already too late to start overcoming the damage done?

Climate change is something that will happen forever on earth, due to the nature of the earth the climate will always change over time, so perhaps a more accurate name for the problems we are facing lately would be global Warming. Since 1880, global temperature has increased by an average of 0.08⁰C per decade, but since 1981 that figure has been closer to 0.18⁰C per decade. This shows not only the magnitude of the problem the planet has been facing lately, but also the drastic nature of the recent rise in global temperatures.

However, this data hardly scratches the surface of the problem at hand. Without any intervention, global temperatures could rise another 3⁰C by 2100, 1.5⁰C above the UN target of 1.5⁰C. Not only will this affect the everyday climate we will live in, with Britain likely with this forecast to have a climate like modern-day Spain, but human health will also be at greater risk as malaria is likely to become drastically more common Disease will be in the South and Midlands of England and Wales by 2080 at the current rate of warming.

Various programs have been launched over the past decade to tackle the climate crisis, for example the Paris Agreement signed at COP21, which aims to keep global temperature rise below 1.5°C, but this is already 8 years extremely unlikely after the agreement was signed.

So the question arises, can the climate crisis actually be solved? Roughly speaking, the answer to that is no. Real progress on reducing global emissions would require stable governments around the world and all willing to work together and we do not need to look beyond the current sanctions being imposed on Russia as a result of the war in the Ukraine to see the improbable nature of it. Furthermore, global warming is all but unsolvable until global superpowers in developing countries such as China and India fully develop and switch to renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power. Not only China and India must transition to renewable energy sources, many nations in Africa must also go through this, and the western world must be willing to allocate resources to make this possible. The West must also switch to renewables, with Germany being one of the few countries that has already made great strides in this switch.

Overall, with all the work that is going into trying to solve the climate crisis the world is facing today, it is evident that there is no such thing as a fully harmonious world, and therefore a complete solution to the climate crisis will be a significant challenge , and there is undoubtedly still a long way to go and not much time to get there.