Climate Change and Societal Responsibility

The hot temperatures and the continuing drought in Australia have led to an unprecedented wave of fires in the country, killing scores of people and millions of animals. The range of fires, which began last September, spread over the past week, and led to the evacuation of several entire cities, and destroyed about 60,000 square kilometers of forests, bushes and gardens, and speculated to to get even worse with the continued rise in temperatures in the country.

In this regard, the World Meteorological Organization says that global warming, which is the main cause of such fires, is due to greenhouse gas emissions.

In other words, humankind pays the price of this global warming and the price of inhuman exploitation of the resources that leads to pollution and other relevant consequences; and this is only the beginning.

If there is one thing that would affect all humans in every corner of the world in the time to come, it would be the climate change; its consequences would affect all parts of the globe, perhaps not at the same time or the same intensity, but they will eventually catch us all.

Over the past time, the World Bank has warned that the Middle East and North Africa is among the most vulnerable places on Earth due to rising sea levels, especially low-lying coastal areas.

It also expected that tens of millions of people in the region would be exposed to water shortages by the year 2025. The scarcity of water as a result of drought will in turn increase the pressure on groundwater resources and reduce agricultural crops, which will affect the economy of these countries, and the revenues from agricultural crops and tourism, and, accordingly, at rates unemployment, weak purchasing power, and its related societal problems.

The data released recently by "Copernicus" showed that temperatures all over the world in the past year were second to 2016, when temperatures rose 0.12 ° C due to the El Niño climate phenomenon.

The report showed that the past five years have been the hottest, and the warmest period since the recordings began. The global temperature rose in 2019, 0.6 degrees Celsius from the average in years 1981-2010, and the earth's temperature during the past five years increased between 1.1 and 1.2 degrees Celsius compared to the period before the Industrial Revolution.

Copernicus added that carbon concentrations in the atmosphere continued to rise in 2019 and reached their highest levels ever.

The United Nations also said last year that greenhouse gas emissions should decrease by 7.6 percent annually until 2030 in order to reduce the temperature levels by 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Climate change-related disasters have occurred in the first week of 2020, such as fires in southeast Australia and the floods that have killed dozens in Indonesia.

Scientists said that such disasters will become even more frequent and severe with increasing temperatures. The phenomenon of climate warming was more clear last year in Alaska and other parts of the Arctic, in addition to large areas of eastern and southern Europe, South Africa and Australia.

In Europe all seasons were warmer than average, and several countries recorded warmer summer and winter temperatures. The Copernicus service reported that December 2019 was 3.2 ° C warmer than the 1981-2010 reference period.

Scientists from all continents confirm via scientific analysis and statistics that any increase with two degrees Celsius, as expected, for the global temperature will be destructive, and it will constitute a super catastrophe on environment and the economy that only God can save humans from.

The biggest serious threat that we may leave to future generations is climate change, which could result in decades of drought, floods, severe heat waves, spread of epidemics and water scarcity, with all that will follow from the endless migrations of people, so countries must undertake the legal responsibilities that they have assumed, especially at the Paris Summit on climate. There is also a need to generalize the possession of technology and renewable energies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, which is the responsibility of inpiduals and groups.