Matteo Sabbatini, Environmental & Sustainability Specialist at SEWS-CABIND provides some reflections on Climate Change.
The term “climate change” refers to significant long-term shifts in the Earth’s climate, that is, all the environmental parameters and indicators such as pressure, temperature, precipitation and the composition of gases in the atmosphere.
These changes occur continuously and have caused a succession of shorter or longer warmer periods and ice ages. Under normal conditions such cycles last for hundreds of thousands of years.
However, in recent decades climate change has begun to be considered negatively, especially in terms of climate overheating (the increase in average temperature), due to the shifts that have occurred over the last 200 years and their speed.
The main cause of climate change since the mid-1800s has been the global warming deriving from human action linked to the combustion of fossil fuels such as coal and oil. In fact, carbon dioxide in the air has gone from 280 parts per million to 420 parts per million. As we are aware, CO2 is the main cause of the so-called greenhouse effect, the phenomenon by which heat caused by solar radiation cannot escape from the Earth's atmosphere and causes a greater overheating than would occur under normal conditions.
The rise in global average temperatures has many consequences such as the melting of ice caps or the rise in sea levels, but there are also other effects that we should be aware of. The increase in extreme weather events such as storms, hail, heat waves and heavy snowfall. The phenomena of severe drought or the unavailability of water due to prolonged periods of no rain. The damage from floods or fires caused by the tropicalization of once milder climates.
All this has a negative impact on both plant and animal life forms as well as the societies in which we live. The effects include the increase in health issues linked to pollution, the vulnerability of some age groups, the greater deterioration of buildings and maintenance costs, the increase in spending on cooling or heating (increase in use of raw materials), damage to agriculture, increase in insurance and in general the cost of living.
How to reverse the trend?
Both the causes and the effects of climate change must be considered on a global scale. In fact, although the largest emissions can be attributed to a few countries, the effects have unconditional repercussions on the entire planet.
For this reason, corrective action must also be global, even if proportionate to the damage that is being caused. The objective of limiting the increase in the average global temperature to below +1.5°C must see everyone united in the search for non-fossil energy sources, more sustainable construction methods, and lifestyles that are more attentive to the impact on the natural world, which can no longer be seen as a mere resource to be exploited unscrupulously.
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