Divided on basis of borders, nations, color, race, linguistics, and sometimes different biological features, what kept inhabitants of the planet Earth still as united, one and lone family as a human is climate change. Climate knows no borders. This universality of climate is something that can be categorized as both blessing and evil, simultaneously. Blessing as no one living on this planet is emancipated from the effects of it, consequently resolving it as a threat to everyone. Evil as this beyond-border approach to the climate does not substantiate and proportionate the adverse effect on people, responsible for actions that are liable for global warming.
Tired of wars, exhausted in the never-ending race of weapons: more in numbers and more lethal, and collapsed in ravenousness of insatiate thirst for financial supremacy over others, humanity is standing stagnant in the corner, jaws are dropping, eyes blinking unintentionally, looking back at the mess that he has made out of this blue and green planet. But everyone is still looking at everyone else, waiting for someone who will take the first step to end the war of humans against himself.
From Stockholm Convention (1972) about 50 years ago and Earth Summit (1992) in Rio 30 years ago, humans took an appreciable time to finally realize that even after every possible scientific achievement, the future of humanity is still and will be under threat. Finally, an agreement was made in 2015 at Paris Summit after finally accepting that climate change is human-made and it is the only threat to the future of humanity. This was undoubtedly a revolutionary breakthrough in that inhabitant of this planet finally realized the colossal damage that he caused and were willing to rectify or at least impede and slow down the pace at which Earth is moving towards its eternal fate.
But even after waking up to this horrific reality, human seems still to want to be in their charming dream and deliberately avoid the furious glaze of his created, ruthless, and unleashed red-eyed monster: global warming. Now, the question is not about reversing and compensating for the damage already caused to this planet mainly after the industrial revolution, the debate that persists now is how to slow down the inevitable collapse of the Earth.
The formal process of negotiation was started at the First Conference of Parties (COP1) in 1995. Nonetheless, parties are still nowhere close to keeping the temperature rise within the safe threshold of the magical number 1.5 degrees centigrade till the end of this century. It is perhaps an ugly truth to realize that this so-called safe threshold is just a delusion, it should be called safe for a current inhabitant of the planet but it is however not safe in anyways for the generation yet to come.
Global warming is often misidentified and undermined as only a rise in temperature of mere a degree or a fraction more than that. This is unfortunately not the case. This rise in temperature results in the form of tropical cyclones: Asia’s litany of typhoons and hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, heat waves, forest fires, droughts, storms, and extreme unexpected and unwanted precipitations. Adversities of climate change are also in the form of rising sea levels, sea surges, ocean acidification, glacier-lake outburst flows, erosion of land, and rapid melting of snow-capped regions which hold three-quarters of freshwater of Earth.
The myth of nothing more than just a little warmer has been completely shattered as climate-related disasters are now more often than past. Still, signatories of the Paris pact, pertaining to curbing the meteoric pace of emission of GHGs, are reluctant to take measures to mitigate the release of GHGs or explore alternative green energies even when adverse climatic effects are already being witnessed in many parts of the world.
The greats of the world and we have all good reason to consider them greats since they are the great emitters of notorious carbon dioxide, proportionate to their muscles, possess the great risk of ending the world sooner than anticipated or at least making it hell for the inhabitants of the only planet discovered so far in the universe which entails life. With gigantic 10bn MTCO2 and 5.4bn MTCO2 respectively, China and US, leading the world in many other fields, are also not oblivion of their obligation here too. India with 2.5bn MTCO2, Russia with 1.7bn MTCO2, Japan with 1.2bn MTCO2, and Germany with 0.75bn MTCO2 proudly standing among the list of the greats of the world.
It is presaged that with this pace of emission of GHGs, the rise in the frequency and the intensity of recurring natural disasters will be much earlier than anticipated. This crucial time demands and necessitates that we have to go much beyond mere lip service to incarcerate unleashed monster of climate change. Unless we find some Noah’s Arch, we cannot afford to any further extent this reckless, apathetic, and for granted approach towards our planet.
The point of no return is not too far from where we are currently standing, in fact, it will not be wrong it is said that we are exactly standing on the line at which point of no return actually is, and our next step will shape future of this planet Earth: the inhabitant of seven billion humans, countless living species and more importantly, the only so far unknown home of us in this unimaginably vast universe. It is not the gun but the man behind the gun who fires. Our future will shape in the way we ought it to be and our priorities will carve out what we want in our future.
