04. The Syllabus: A. Understanding Sustainability and Climate Change
Fields Of Change: A Sustainability Handbook
So, the climate has always been changing, but you don’t have to be a climate scientist to look at the graph and see something has drastically changed in a short period of time. The huge increase in atmospheric carbon started with the industrial revolution, and the beginning of the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and gas. However, this process is not just one-way - CO 2 is removed from the atmosphere by ‘carbon sinks’ . Forests, for example, are carbon sinks as they absorb carbon as plants photosynthesize. The problem is, though, that we are not just emitting more carbon, but we are also destroying Earth’s natural carbon sinks. We are destroying forests at an alarming rate due to human development, agriculture, and forest fires - in fact, a recent satellite study found that the earth is losing a football pitch-sized area of rainforest every six seconds 8 . Not only is this disastrous for the regulation of atmospheric carbon, but deforestation and other forms of habitat destruction due to human activity is also catastrophic for wildlife. Those football pitches of rainforest being destroyed are not empty - they were full to the brim with plants and animals. As such, while we often focus on climate change as the main human impact on the environment, it is not just about carbon - scientists are also warning that we are in an ecological crisis , and potentially causing a mass extinction of species.
In fact, we have wiped out 60% of animal populations since England won the FIFA World Cup in 1966 9 . That might seem like a long time ago in human terms, but in comparison to the usual rate at which species go extinct, this is the blink of an eye. This is a major problem - we depend on the abundance and variation of species of plants and animals (which we refer to as biodiversity) to not just regulate carbon, but for food production through pollination, protection from natural hazards, and human well-being, amongst many other things. These two issues are closely linked as climate change is a major driver of biodiversity loss. Human activity is driving both and in the last 200 years has caused millions of years worth of environmental change. In addition, biodiversity loss is far from the only impact of climate change - a warmer world will see more frequent and more severe extreme weather events (such as floods, heatwaves, and tropical storms), rising sea levels,
food and water scarcity, and consequently human conflict and suffering.
In fact, we have wiped out 60% of animal populations since England won the FIFA World Cup in 1966.
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