2020 was the year of Covid, what will 2021 hold?
As the world turned its eyes to a dire pandemic, another global catastrophe continued to gain steam: Climate change has been simmering since the Industrial Revolution, but 2020 was a year that really drove home how fast it's accelerating.
2020 was a massive year of change, and one of the things we learnt is just how vulnerable we all are. Thankfully the debate on whether climate change is happening became irrelevant, instead the conversation turned to what changes must be made and how much time do we have.
Earth is the only living world we know of and life on it is shaped by natural forces, but there is a force incredibly powerful that is upsetting the balance of life on Earth - that force is us, the human population.
We reached milestones that were suppose to take decades to arrive, broke records and watched the frozen North melt even faster than anticipated. From wildfires to hurricanes to melting poles, here are some of the biggest signs in 2020 that climate change is speeding up.
As climate change heats up our oceans and atmosphere, the outcome is more hurricanes. While climate change may not fuel or make storms more common, evidence suggests that warming oceans will make storms stronger and more deadly.
Melting sea ice, shrinking glaciers, blistering summer heat and vanishing snow cover — nowhere on Earth has changed as dramatically, due to climate change, as the Arctic. And that change could be permanent.
Global warming is reshaping Greenland and the Antarctica. These habitats are changing due to unprecedented ice loss through warmer temperatures. If entire glaciers in the Antarctica melt into the ocean, sea levels could rise a staggering 25 inches (63.5 centimeters).
Where there's fire, there's smoke…and with record-breaking wildfire seasons in 2020 there was lots and lots of it. Nothing says apocalypse than walking outside at Noon and seeing the skies as dark as night.
Our warming planet is now breaking records for warmest, hottest and driest.
Despite the dire warnings our planet is making, it's still not too late to reverse the trajectory we are currently on.
The Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty on climate change, is striving to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees celsius (optimally 1.5 degrees compared to pre-industrial level) in order to achieve a climate neutral world. No single approach will work to stop our emissions — every single approach must be pursued to slow warming; forest replanting, pulling carbon out of the air, sustainable agricultural practices, electric cars, solar and wind energy generation.
But to get there, we need to take action…and not wait for someone else to fix the problem that will affect us all.