Climate Change, The Time Bomb of Humanity

BY ALLAN BUSUULWA.

For thousands of years humanity has continued to develop through different technological innovations starting with the use of animals, then later slaves to provide power leading to the industrial revolution that turned history around. we have always tried and will always try to make Earth a better place for our survival and through these advancements we have been and will be able to improve life on Earth giving people a longer life span due to advances in Health care, increasing food production brought about by advances in agriculture. All these have led to a steady increase in human population creating a higher demand for all necessities, the greatest necessity demanded over time has been energy because it is what we use to run everything, including production of other necessities like food, people depend on it for cooking, lighting, movement among others. Since the industrial revolution the method of energy production has been burning fossils and now the long term burning of fossils is presenting devastating impact on our climate ,over the years Continued burning of fossils and carbon containing materials (Cloro Floro carbons-CFCs) has resulted into a rapid increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere above normal since the industrial revolution, there has been a steady increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, forming a carbon dioxide layer and as a result this carbon dioxide layer formed for a long time has been acting as a blanket, trapping the sun's radiant rays preventing them from escaping from the Earth's surface, this has resulted into a steady increase in the Earth’s temperature above normal an effect termed as Global warming .This is presenting devastating impacts on Earth and in turn on people.

Rain water harvesting in Africa

. This continued warming of the earth surface is leading to the melting of ice in the north and south pole, data shows that amount of ice in the Artic has decreased by 10% in the past 10years, this is leading to increase in sea levels meaning that all the water that was stored as ice will cover land covering countries like Kiribati, Maldives, Bangladesh among others wiping them off the face of the earth, leading to death and displacement of people resulting into more refugees and putting more millions of people’s lives at risk, this tempers with human rights because everyone has a right to live, furthermore we are seeing more intense floods for example flooding of Miami and other regions, all these floods have been attributed to increase in sea level leading to destruction of millions of dollars in property and death of people

· We have continued to experience increasing average temperatures of the earth starting in 2014 when we obtained the highest temperature average ever recorded in history, this further increased in 2015 through 2017, resulting into warmer winters as a result of disappearance of snow for example in 2016 people in New York were seen wearing T-shirts instead of sweaters in winter due to the lack of snow meaning that in the next two centuries there may not be snow, in tropical regions people are experiencing more sever and frequent droughts, this is evident in most African countries like Uganda, Tanzania and other parts of Africa, leading to hunger and lose of lives on the other hand increase in temperature has led to change in migratory patterns of fish like the Tuna because they are moving to deeper areas this has shown a reduction in food supply of the thus affecting the economy of these countries for example Panama.

· It is rendering most parts of the world unable to grow crops because of change in weather patterns, due to lack of rain, increasing food insecurity with continued increase in atmospheric temperatures humanity will face its worst fear of lack of food. On the other hand, it is also making regeneration of trees in deforested areas despite the efforts of many, this is having devastating impacts on eco-systems like animal species that cannot adopted have started disappearing for example honeycreepers (Patrick Barkham-The guardian), this is having devastating impacts on the ecosystem, the very building blocks of this planet.

· We’re the first generation to feel the impact of climate change and the last generation that can actually do something about it (Governor Jay Inslee of Washington State), with this we as a race have an opportunity and duty to act while we still can to ensure the survival of the human race, every person in his or her capacity can do something to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases ( Greenhouse gases are gases that cause global warming) like carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, we can do this by re-imaging the world’s sources of power, moving a step away from coal and fossils that produce a lot of carbon dioxide and utilizing the already developing technologies of wind power (as seen in German) and solar power (evident in china), manufacture of cars that use electricity rather than fossil fuel. In our homes we can ensure this by using low energy requirement lighting systems, unplugging devices that aren’t under use, this reduces the energy demand and in turn reduces the amount of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere. This combined with new technologies, we can defuse this time bomb threatening to destroy humanity.