It is necessary to understand climate change – 08/25/2023 – Sou Ciência

In recent weeks, the great fires that have occurred in the Northern Hemisphere have made headlines around the world. The dramatic scenes seen in Hawaii, California and Greece, to name a few examples, gained darker contours because dozens of people lost their lives. This news adds to a series of others accumulated in recent years, which also punctuated the Amazon, the Pantanal and the Brazilian Cerrado as the scene of natural disasters caused by fires. More than ever, it is necessary to understand that climate change poses a serious risk to life.

More intense and more frequent extreme environmental events are pointed out by scientists as a consequence of the acceleration of human activities, especially in the last century, in which the increasing use of fossil fuels combined with the deforestation of natural areas, among other aspects. On the one hand, our species has never witnessed such a high acceleration in the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and, on the other hand, it has never eliminated so many natural areas that capture and cushion the effects of these gases. If we compared ourselves to a patient with a rising fever, it would be the same as acting to destroy the medicine that would heal us while we delirious in our increasingly debilitating illness.

The impacts of extreme events and heat waves that we have been experiencing are obviously not restricted to where and when they occur. Many of them last for several years because they interfere with hyperconnected natural processes and also with the structure and dynamics of the social fabric. Places hit by natural disasters experience a strong shock to community cohesion, in which the reconstruction effort continues to be accompanied by uncomfortable uncertainty about new events. Environmental impacts become a mental health issue. On the one hand, it is up to governments and parliaments, in their different spheres, to act to mitigate the projections made by scientists for the future and prepare to mitigate the impact of events that are already underway. Elsewhere, our individual action based on our daily choices and the consumption pattern we want to support make a big difference, as does having a critical and active stance in relation to the governments that are part of our context. There is no more time to waste with agents and representatives who deny Science or who do not give it due attention. We are all subject to the effects of climate change, even if we locally do our homework, because natural processes simply ignore the territorial boundaries of countries, states and cities. At the same time, it is clear that economic condition makes a huge difference in how people will suffer from the negative effects of extreme events. The consequences of climate change are also pronounced in inequality between people and countries.

Natural ecosystems are formed by a multitude of interconnected processes that are fundamental to our survival, even if they are imperceptible at a superficial glance. They are an invisible chain, but very present. The processes that form the support base of our activities are called by scientists as “environmental services”, a concept created in the wake of the evolution of the area of ​​Ecological Economics. Climate and hydrological regulation, nutrient cycling and the amortization of impacts are examples of environmental services for which we do not pay even a penny to natural entities for the enormous benefits we enjoy. In a seminal article published in Nature in 1997, Robert Constanza and collaborators estimated that Nature would have provided us with more than 33 trillion dollars during the year 1994. This is equivalent to 59 times the GDP of Brazil at the time. The authors believed that their numbers were an underestimation, as there were still environmental services that had not yet been adequately addressed, that is, the economic benefits generated by Nature far exceed the wealth generated by most of the world’s population. Although we do not pay Nature, the deregulation of environmental services resulting from extreme weather events can result in enormous economic losses. We stop earning and spend to repair.

Climate change is not a mere projection for 2050 or 2100. It is clear that they are already part of our present. The significance of the global average temperature records reached in 2023 represents much more than the uncomfortable heat of this dry winter with practically no cold days. They are indicators that we are reaching very worrying levels in the functioning of our planet, with consequences that cross us in several dimensions. In 1978, Adoniran Barbosa released the song “Praça da Sé”, in which he sang “It’s progress, it changed everything, it even changed the climate”. There is no time to lose. The climate has already changed, and with it our lives too.

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