climate change essay in css

Climate Change: Science and Impacts Factsheet

The earth’s climate.

Climate change is altering temperature, precipitation, and sea levels, and will adversely impact human and natural systems, including water resources, human settlements and health, ecosystems, and biodiversity. The unprecedented acceleration of climate change over the last 50 years and the increasing confidence in global climate models add to the compelling evidence that climate is being affected by greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from human activities. 2

Changes in climate should not be confused with changes in weather. Weather is observed at a particular location on a time scale of hours or days, and exhibits a high degree of variability, whereas climate is the long-term average of short-term weather patterns, such as the annual average temperature or rainfall. 3 Under a stable climate, there is an energy balance between incoming short wave solar radiation and outgoing long wave infrared radiation. Solar radiation passes through the atmosphere and most is absorbed by the Earth’s surface. The surface then re-emits energy as infrared radiation, a portion of which escapes into space. Increases in the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reduce the amount of energy the Earth’s surface radiates to space, thus warming the planet. 4

The Earth's Greenhouse Effect 1

Climate Forcings

• Disturbances of the Earth’s balance of incoming and outgoing energy are referred to as positive or negative climate forcings. Positive forcings, such as GHGs, exert a warming influence on the Earth, while negative forcings, such as sulfate aerosols, exert a cooling influence. 5
• Increased concentrations of GHGs from anthropogenic sources have increased the absorption of infrared radiation, enhancing the natural greenhouse effect. Methane and other GHGs are more potent, but CO₂ contributes most to warming because of its prevalence. 5
• Anthropogenic GHG emissions, to date, amount to a climate forcing roughly equal to 1% of the net incoming solar energy, or the energy equivalent of burning 13 million barrels of oil every minute. 6

Climate Feedbacks and Inertia

• •Climate change is also affected by the Earth’s responses to forcings, known as climate feedbacks. For example, the increase in water vapor that occurs with warming further increases surface warming and evaporation, as water vapor is a powerful GHG. 5
• The volume of the ocean results in large thermal inertia that slows the response of climate change to forcings; energy balance changes result in delayed climate response with high momentum. 7
• As polar ice melts, less sunlight is reflected and the oceans absorb more solar radiation. 5
• Due to increasing temperature, large reserves of organic matter frozen in subarctic permafrost will thaw and decay, releasing additional CO₂ and methane to the atmosphere. 8 June 2020 was tied for the warmest on record and extreme temperatures in the Artic (especially Siberia) contributed to large wildfires and further thawing of permafrost. The fires alone were estimated to have released 59 million metric tons (Mt) of CO₂ into the atmosphere. 9
• If GHG emissions were completely eliminated today, climate change impacts would still continue for centuries. 10 The Earth’s temperature requires 25 to 50 years to reach 60% of its equilibrium response. 11
• Today’s emissions will affect future generations; CO₂ persists in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. 12

Human Influence on Climate

• Separately, neither natural forcings (e.g., volcanic activity and solar variation) nor anthropogenic forcings (e.g., GHGs and aerosols) can fully explain the warming experienced since 1850. 13
• Climate models most closely match the observed temperature trend only when natural and anthropogenic forcings are considered together. 13
• In 2023, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that: “human activities, principally through emissions of greenhouse gases, have unequivocally caused global warming, with global surface temperature reaching 1.1°C above 1850-1900 in 2011-2020.” 14

Modeled and Observed Global Average Temperatures 14

Observed Impacts

Physical systems.

• Global average temperatures in 2022 were 0.86°C (1.55°F) higher than the 20th century average. 16
• The warmest year on record since records began in 1880 was 2016, with 2020 ranking second. In 2020 global average land temperatures experienced a record high, while 2016 global ocean temperatures remain the highest on record. 17 The nine warmest years on record since 1880 have all occurred within the last nine years (2014-2022), and in 2022 annual global temperatures were above average for the 46th consecutive year. 16  
• Annual 2022 arctic temperatures rose to 0.73°C above the 1991-2020 average. Arctic sea ice is younger, thinner, and less expansive than in the 1980s and 90s. 18 The 2021 extent of ice reached the twelfth lowest annual cover on record since 1979, 4.92 million square kilometers. 19
• U.S. average annual precipitation has increased by 4% since 1901, but the intensity and frequency of extreme precipitation events has increased even more, a trend that is expected to continue. 20
• Global mean sea level has rose between 15 and 25 cm since 1901. Due to deep ocean warming and ice sheet melt, sea level rise is unavoidable and will continue for centuries to millennia. 14
• Snow cover has noticeably decreased in the Northern Hemisphere. Current temperatures have risen 1.1°C and snow cover has decreased 1% relative to 1850-1900. Under a 4°C warming scenario, snow cover is predicted to decrease by 15%-30%. 10

Northwestern Glacier melt, Alaska, 1940-2005 18

Biological Systems

• Warming that has already occurred is affecting the biological timing (phenology) and geographic range of plant and animal communities. 22
• Often biological responses are not sufficient to handle the rapid spatial and temporal shifts that climate change is causing. Globally, approximately half of the species assessed have shifted polewards or to higher elevations. 14
• Relationships such as predator-prey interactions are affected by these shifts, especially when changes occur unevenly between species. 23
• Since the start of the 20th century, the average growing season in the contiguous 48 states has lengthened by nearly two weeks. 24

Predicted Changes

Increased temperature.

• IPCC predicts global temperature will rise by 1.5°C (2.7°F) by the early 2030s.10 In the long term, global mean surface temperatures are predicted to rise 0.4-2.6°C (0.7-4.7°F) from 2045-2065 and 0.3-4.8°C (0.5-8.6°F) from 2081- 2100, relative to the reference period of 1986-2005. Since 1970, global average temperatures have been rising at a rate of 1.7°C per century, significantly higher than the average rate of decline of 0.01°C over the past 7,000 years. 5,25

Projected Near Surface Temperature Change Based on Warming Scenarios 10

Ocean Impacts

• Models anticipate sea level rise between 26 and 77 cm for a 1.5°C increase in temperature by 2100. The rise is a result of thermal expansion from warming oceans and water added to the oceans by melting glaciers and ice sheets. 25
• The oceans absorb about 31% of anthropogenic CO2 emissions, resulting in increased acidity. Coral reefs are projected to decline by 70–90% under a 1.5°C global warming senario. 14,26

Implications for Human and Natural Systems

• This century, an unprecedented combination of climate change, associated disturbances, and other global change drivers will likely exceed many ecosystems’ capacities for resilience. 27 Risks associated with a warming scenario of 4°C include more frequent and intense hot and cold extreme temperatures, precipitation events, droughts, and hurricanes. 10
• In 2023, the IPCC stated with very high confidence that “There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all.” 14
• With an increase in average global temperatures of 2°C, nearly every summer would be warmer than the hottest 5% of recent summers. 28
• Increased temperatures, changes in precipitation, and climate variability have increased the occurrence of food-borne and water-borne diseases. Vector-borne diseases are also occurring more often and in new geographic regions. 14,28
• Although higher CO₂ concentrations and slight temperature increases can boost crop yields, the negative effects of warming on plant health and soil moisture lead to lower yields at higher temperatures. Intensified soil and water resource degradation resulting from changes in temperature and precipitation will further stress agriculture in certain regions. 28

Center for Sustainable Systems, University of Michigan. 2023. "Climate Change: Science and Impacts Factsheet." Pub. No. CSS05-19.

• Adapted from image by W. Elder, National Park Service.
• U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) (2009) Global Climate Change Impacts in the U.S.
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) (2019) “What’s the Difference Between Weather and Climate?”
• National Aeronautics and Space Administration (2010) The Earth’s Radiation Budget.
• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2013) Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis.
• CSS calculation based on data from UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) (2003) Climate Change Information Kit.
• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (2016) Climate Change Indicators in the U.S., 2016.
• UNEP (2012) Policy Implications of Warming Permafrost.
• Cappucci, M. (2020) “Unprecedented heat in Siberia pushed planet to warmest June on record, tied with last year.” The Washington Post.
• IPCC (2021) AR6 Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis
• Hansen, J., et al. (2005) Earth’s Energy Imbalance: Confirmation and Implications. Science, 229(3): 857.
• Archer, D., et al. (2009) Atmospheric Lifetime of Fossil Fuel Carbon Dioxide. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, 37: 117-34.
• UNEP and GRID-Arendal (2005) Vital Climate Change Graphics.
• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2023) Synthesis Report of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) Longer report.
• Adapted from USGCRP (2009) Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States.
• NOAA (2023) State of the Climate: 2022 Global Climate Report.
• NOAA (2022) State of the Climate: 2021 Global Climate Report.
• NOAA (2022) Arctic Report Card 2022.
• NOAA (2021) Arctic Report Card 2021.
• USGCRP (2018) Fourth National Climate Assessment.
• Photo courtesy of the National Snow and Ice Data Center/World Data Center for Glaciology.
• Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (2010) Global Biodiversity Outlook 3.
• National Research Council (2009) Ecological Impacts of Climate Change.
• U.S. EPA (2021) Climate Change Indicators: Length of Growing Season.
• IPCC (2018) Global Warming of 1.5 C: Summary for Policy Makers, Chapter 1.
• NOAA (2019) Global Ocean Absorbing More Carbon.
• IPCC (2007) Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Working Group II Contributions to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report.
• National Research Council (2011) Climate Stabilization Targets: Emissions, Concentrations, and Impacts over Decades to Millennia.

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Climate change

Global climate change refers to the rise of earth's temperature, caused by human factors. It originates from the greenhouse effect of certain gases in our atmosphere like carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) or methane (CH 4 ) that block the escaping heat. The concentration of these gases has risen dramatically by human impact since the mid of the 20 th century, with the burning of fossil fuels (oil and gas) and deforestation being main causes of this rise. The observed and expected effects include more and longer periods of draught, wildfires and an increased number of extreme weather events.

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Home / For Educators: Grades 6-12 / Climate Explained: Introductory Essays About Climate Change Topics

Climate Explained: Introductory Essays About Climate Change Topics

Filed under: backgrounders for educators ,.

Climate Explained, a part of Yale Climate Connections, is an essay collection that addresses an array of climate change questions and topics, including why it’s cold outside if global warming is real, how we know that humans are responsible for global warming, and the relationship between climate change and national security.

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Climate Change Basics: Five Facts, Ten Words

Backgrounders for Educators

To simplify the scientific complexity of climate change, we focus on communicating five key facts about climate change that everyone should know. 

Why should we care about climate change?

Having different perspectives about global warming is natural, but the most important thing that anyone should know about climate change is why it matters.  

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Responding to the Climate Threat: Essays on Humanity’s Greatest Challenge

A new book co-authored by MIT Joint Program Founding Co-Director Emeritus Henry Jacoby

From the Back Cover

This book demonstrates how robust and evolving science can be relevant to public discourse about climate policy. Fighting climate change is the ultimate societal challenge, and the difficulty is not just in the wrenching adjustments required to cut greenhouse emissions and to respond to change already under way. A second and equally important difficulty is ensuring widespread public understanding of the natural and social science. This understanding is essential for an effective risk management strategy at a planetary scale. The scientific, economic, and policy aspects of climate change are already a challenge to communicate, without factoring in the distractions and deflections from organized programs of misinformation and denial. 

Here, four scholars, each with decades of research on the climate threat, take on the task of explaining our current understanding of the climate threat and what can be done about it, in lay language―importantly, without losing critical  aspects of the natural and social science. In a series of essays, published during the 2020 presidential election, the COVID pandemic, and through the fall of 2021, they explain the essential components of the challenge, countering the forces of distrust of the science and opposition to a vigorous national response.  

Each of the essays provides an opportunity to learn about a particular aspect of climate science and policy within the complex context of current events. The overall volume is more than the sum of its individual articles. Proceeding each essay is an explanation of the context in which it was written, followed by observation of what has happened since its first publication. In addition to its discussion of topical issues in modern climate science, the book also explores science communication to a broad audience. Its authors are not only scientists – they are also teachers, using current events to teach when people are listening. For preserving Earth’s planetary life support system, science and teaching are essential. Advancing both is an unending task.

About the Authors

Gary Yohe is the Huffington Foundation Professor of Economics and Environmental Studies, Emeritus, at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. He served as convening lead author for multiple chapters and the Synthesis Report for the IPCC from 1990 through 2014 and was vice-chair of the Third U.S. National Climate Assessment.

Henry Jacoby is the William F. Pounds Professor of Management, Emeritus, in the MIT Sloan School of Management and former co-director of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, which is focused on the integration of the natural and social sciences and policy analysis in application to the threat of global climate change.

Richard Richels directed climate change research at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). He served as lead author for multiple chapters of the IPCC in the areas of mitigation, impacts and adaptation from 1992 through 2014. He also served on the National Assessment Synthesis Team for the first U.S. National Climate Assessment.

Ben Santer is a climate scientist and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellow. He contributed to all six IPCC reports. He was the lead author of Chapter 8 of the 1995 IPCC report which concluded that “the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate”. He is currently a Visiting Researcher at UCLA’s Joint Institute for Regional Earth System Science & Engineering.

Access the Book

View the book on the publisher's website  here .

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Our Future Is Now - A Climate Change Essay by Francesca Minicozzi, '21

Francesca Minicozzi (class of 2021) is a Writing/Biology major who plans to study medicine after graduation. She wrote this essay on climate change for WR 355/Travel Writing, which she took while studying abroad in Newcastle in spring 2020. Although the coronavirus pandemic curtailed Francesca’s time abroad, her months in Newcastle prompted her to learn more about climate change. Terre Ryan Associate Professor, Writing Department

Our Future Is Now

By Francesca Minicozzi, '21 Writing and Biology Major

 “If you don’t mind me asking, how is the United States preparing for climate change?” my flat mate, Zac, asked me back in March, when we were both still in Newcastle. He and I were accustomed to asking each other about the differences between our home countries; he came from Cambridge, while I originated in Long Island, New York. This was one of our numerous conversations about issues that impact our generation, which we usually discussed while cooking dinner in our communal kitchen. In the moment of our conversation, I did not have as strong an answer for him as I would have liked. Instead, I informed him of the few changes I had witnessed within my home state of New York.

Zac’s response was consistent with his normal, diplomatic self. “I have been following the BBC news in terms of the climate crisis for the past few years. The U.K. has been working hard to transition to renewable energy sources. Similar to the United States, here in the United Kingdom we have converted over to solar panels too. My home does not have solar panels, but a lot of our neighbors have switched to solar energy in the past few years.”

“Our two countries are similar, yet so different,” I thought. Our conversation continued as we prepared our meals, with topics ranging from climate change to the upcoming presidential election to Britain’s exit from the European Union. However, I could not shake the fact that I knew so little about a topic so crucial to my generation.

After I abruptly returned home from the United Kingdom because of the global pandemic, my conversation with my flat mate lingered in my mind. Before the coronavirus surpassed climate change headlines, I had seen the number of internet postings regarding protests to protect the planet dramatically increase. Yet the idea of our planet becoming barren and unlivable in a not-so-distant future had previously upset me to the point where a part of me refused to deal with it. After I returned from studying abroad, I decided to educate myself on the climate crisis.

My quest for climate change knowledge required a thorough understanding of the difference between “climate change” and “global warming.” Climate change is defined as “a pattern of change affecting global or regional climate,” based on “average temperature and rainfall measurements” as well as the frequency of extreme weather events. 1   These varied temperature and weather events link back to both natural incidents and human activity. 2   Likewise, the term global warming was coined “to describe climate change caused by humans.” 3   Not only that, but global warming is most recently attributed to an increase in “global average temperature,” mainly due to greenhouse gas emissions produced by humans. 4

I next questioned why the term “climate change” seemed to take over the term “global warming” in the United States. According to Frank Luntz, a leading Republican consultant, the term “global warming” functions as a rather intimidating phrase. During George W. Bush’s first presidential term, Luntz argued in favor of using the less daunting phrase “climate change” in an attempt to overcome the environmental battle amongst Democrats and Republicans. 5   Since President Bush’s term, Luntz remains just one political consultant out of many politicians who has recognized the need to address climate change. In an article from 2019, Luntz proclaimed that political parties aside, the climate crisis affects everyone. Luntz argued that politicians should steer clear of trying to communicate “the complicated science of climate change,” and instead engage voters by explaining how climate change personally impacts citizens with natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, and forest fires. 6   He even suggested that a shift away from words like “sustainability” would gear Americans towards what they really want: a “cleaner, safer, healthier” environment. 7

The idea of a cleaner and heathier environment remains easier said than done. The Paris Climate Agreement, introduced in 2015, began the United Nations’ “effort to combat global climate change.” 8   This agreement marked a global initiative to “limit global temperature increase in this century to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels,” while simultaneously “pursuing means to limit the increase to 1.5 degrees.” 9    Every country on earth has joined together in this agreement for the common purpose of saving our planet. 10   So, what could go wrong here? As much as this sounds like a compelling step in the right direction for climate change, President Donald Trump thought otherwise. In June 2017, President Trump announced the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement with his proclamation of climate change as a “’hoax’ perpetrated by China.” 11   President Trump continued to question the scientific facts behind climate change, remaining an advocate for the expansion of domestic fossil fuel production. 12   He reversed environmental policies implemented by former President Barack Obama to reduce fossil fuel use. 13

Trump’s actions against the Paris Agreement, however, fail to represent the beliefs of Americans as a whole. The majority of American citizens feel passionate about the fight against climate change. To demonstrate their support, some have gone as far as creating initiatives including America’s Pledge and We Are Still In. 14   Although the United States officially exited the Paris Agreement on November 4, 2020, this withdrawal may not survive permanently. 15   According to experts, our new president “could rejoin in as short as a month’s time.” 16   This offers a glimmer of hope.

The Paris Agreement declares that the United States will reduce greenhouse gas emission levels by 26 to 28 percent by the year 2025. 17   As a leader in greenhouse gas emissions, the United States needs to accept the climate crisis for the serious challenge that it presents and work together with other nations. The concept of working coherently with all nations remains rather tricky; however, I remain optimistic. I think we can learn from how other countries have adapted to the increased heating of our planet. During my recent study abroad experience in the United Kingdom, I was struck by Great Britain’s commitment to combating climate change.

Since the United Kingdom joined the Paris Agreement, the country targets a “net-zero” greenhouse gas emission for 2050. 18   This substantial alteration would mark an 80% reduction of greenhouse gases from 1990, if “clear, stable, and well-designed policies are implemented without interruption.” 19   In order to stay on top of reducing emissions, the United Kingdom tracks electricity and car emissions, “size of onshore and offshore wind farms,” amount of homes and “walls insulated, and boilers upgraded,” as well as the development of government policies, including grants for electric vehicles. 20   A strong grip on this data allows the United Kingdom to target necessary modifications that keep the country on track for 2050. In my brief semester in Newcastle, I took note of these significant changes. The city of Newcastle is small enough that many students and faculty are able to walk or bike to campus and nearby essential shops. However, when driving is unavoidable, the majority of the vehicles used are electric, and many British citizens place a strong emphasis on carpooling to further reduce emissions. The United Kingdom’s determination to severely reduce greenhouse emissions is ambitious and particularly admirable, especially as the United States struggles to shy away from its dependence on fossil fuels.

So how can we, as Americans, stand together to combat global climate change? Here are five adjustments Americans can make to their homes and daily routines that can dramatically make a difference:

• Stay cautious of food waste. Studies demonstrate that “Americans throw away up to 40 percent of the food they buy.” 21   By being more mindful of the foods we purchase, opting for leftovers, composting wastes, and donating surplus food to those in need, we can make an individual difference that impacts the greater good. 22   
• Insulate your home. Insulation functions as a “cost-effective and accessible” method to combat climate change. 23   Homes with modern insulation reduce energy required to heat them, leading to a reduction of emissions and an overall savings; in comparison, older homes can “lose up to 35 percent of heat through their walls.” 24   
• Switch to LED Lighting. LED stands for “light-emitting diodes,” which use “90 percent less energy than incandescent bulbs and half as much as compact fluorescents.” 25   LED lights create light without producing heat, and therefore do not waste energy. Additionally, these lights have a longer duration than other bulbs, which means they offer a continuing savings. 26  
• Choose transportation wisely. Choose to walk or bike whenever the option presents itself. If walking or biking is not an option, use an electric or hybrid vehicle which emits less harmful gases. Furthermore, reduce the number of car trips taken, and carpool with others when applicable. 
• Finally, make your voice heard. The future of our planet remains in our hands, so we might as well use our voices to our advantage. Social media serves as a great platform for this. Moreover, using social media to share helpful hints to combat climate change within your community or to promote an upcoming protest proves beneficial in the long run. If we collectively put our voices to good use, together we can advocate for change.

As many of us are stuck at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, these suggestions are slightly easier to put into place. With numerous “stay-at-home” orders in effect, Americans have the opportunity to make significant achievements for climate change. Personally, I have taken more precautions towards the amount of food consumed within my household during this pandemic. I have been more aware of food waste, opting for leftovers when too much food remains. Additionally, I have realized how powerful my voice is as a young college student. Now is the opportunity for Americans to share how they feel about climate change. During this unprecedented time, our voice is needed now more than ever in order to make a difference.

However, on a much larger scale, the coronavirus outbreak has shed light on reducing global energy consumption. Reductions in travel, both on the roads and in the air, have triggered a drop in emission rates. In fact, the International Energy Agency predicts a 6 percent decrease in energy consumption around the globe for this year alone. 27   This drop is “equivalent to losing the entire energy demand of India.” 28   Complete lockdowns have lowered the global demand for electricity and slashed CO2 emissions. However, in New York City, the shutdown has only decreased carbon dioxide emissions by 10 percent. 29   This proves that a shift in personal behavior is simply not enough to “fix the carbon emission problem.” 30   Climate policies aimed to reduce fossil fuel production and promote clean technology will be crucial steppingstones to ameliorating climate change effects. Our current reduction of greenhouse gas emissions serves as “the sort of reduction we need every year until net-zero emissions are reached around 2050.” 31   From the start of the coronavirus pandemic, politicians came together for the common good of protecting humanity; this demonstrates that when necessary, global leaders are capable of putting humankind above the economy. 32

After researching statistics comparing the coronavirus to climate change, I thought back to the moment the virus reached pandemic status. I knew that a greater reason underlay all of this global turmoil. Our globe is in dire need of help, and the coronavirus reminds the world of what it means to work together. This pandemic marks a turning point in global efforts to slow down climate change. The methods we enact towards not only stopping the spread of the virus, but slowing down climate change, will ultimately depict how humanity will arise once this pandemic is suppressed. The future of our home planet lies in how we treat it right now. 

• “Climate Change: What Do All the Terms Mean?,” BBC News (BBC, May 1, 2019), https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48057733 )
• Ibid. 
• Kate Yoder, “Frank Luntz, the GOP's Message Master, Calls for Climate Action,” Grist (Grist, July 26, 2019), https://grist.org/article/the-gops-most-famous-messaging-strategist-calls-for-climate-action
• Melissa Denchak, “Paris Climate Agreement: Everything You Need to Know,” NRDC, April 29, 2020, https://www.nrdc.org/stories/paris-climate-agreement-everything-you-need-know)
• “Donald J. Trump's Foreign Policy Positions,” Council on Foreign Relations (Council on Foreign Relations), accessed May 7, 2020, https://www.cfr.org/election2020/candidate-tracker/donald-j.-trump?gclid=CjwKCAjw4871BRAjEiwAbxXi21cneTRft_doA5if60euC6QCL7sr-Jwwv76IkgWaUTuyJNx9EzZzRBoCdjsQAvD_BwE#climate and energy )
• David Doniger, “Paris Climate Agreement Explained: Does Congress Need to Sign Off?,” NRDC, December 15, 2016, https://www.nrdc.org/experts/david-doniger/paris-climate-agreement-explained-does-congress-need-sign )
• “How the UK Is Progressing,” Committee on Climate Change, March 9, 2020, https://www.theccc.org.uk/what-is-climate-change/reducing-carbon-emissions/how-the-uk-is-progressing/)
• Ibid.  
• “Top 10 Ways You Can Fight Climate Change,” Green America, accessed May 7, 2020, https://www.greenamerica.org/your-green-life/10-ways-you-can-fight-climate-change )
• Matt McGrath, “Climate Change and Coronavirus: Five Charts about the Biggest Carbon Crash,” BBC News (BBC, May 5, 2020), https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/science-environment-52485712 )

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Reconsidering and rescaling climate change predictions for coral reefs

Coral reefs are at risk from ongoing climate change. We can best serve the reefs by invoking realistic scenarios, empiricism, artificial intelligence and falsification to self-correct the current scientific limits that hinder climate science predictions, communication and policies.

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Explainer: How gender inequality and climate change are interconnected

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Gender inequality coupled with the climate crisis is one of the greatest challenges of our time. It poses threats to ways of life, livelihoods, health, safety and security for women and girls around the world.

Historically, climate change scientists, researchers and policymakers have struggled with how to make the vital connections between gender, social equity, and climate change. As more and more data and research reveal their clear correlation, it’s time to talk about the disparate impacts of climate change and the linkages between women’s empowerment and effective, global climate action.

On International Women’s Day, we take a look at how climate change impacts women and girls, why gender equality is key to climate action, and what you can do to support solutions for women, by women.

How does climate change impact women and girls?

The climate crisis is not “gender neutral”. Women and girls experience the greatest impacts of climate change, which amplifies existing gender inequalities and poses unique threats to their livelihoods, health, and safety.

Across the world, women depend more on, yet have less access to, natural resources. In many regions, women bear a disproportionate responsibility for securing food, water, and fuel. Agriculture is the most important employment sector for women in low- and lower-middle income countries, during periods of drought and erratic rainfall, women, as agricultural workers and primary procurers, work harder to secure income and resources for their families. This puts added pressure on girls, who often have to leave school to help their mothers manage the increased burden.

Climate change is a “threat multiplier”, meaning it escalates social, political and economic tensions in fragile and conflict-affected settings. As climate change drives conflict across the world, women and girls face increased vulnerabilities to all forms of gender-based violence, including conflict-related sexual violence, human trafficking, child marriage, and other forms of violence.

When disasters strike, women are less likely to survive and more likely to be injured due to long standing gender inequalities that have created disparities in information, mobility, decision-making, and access to resources and training. In the aftermath, women and girls are less able to access relief and assistance, further threatening their livelihoods, wellbeing and recovery, and creating a vicious cycle of vulnerability to future disasters.

Women’s and girls’ health is endangered by climate change and disasters by limiting access to services and health care, as well as increasing risks related to maternal and child health. Research indicates that extreme heat increases incidence of stillbirth, and climate change is increasing the spread of vector-borne illnesses such as malaria, dengue fever, and Zika virus, which are linked to worse maternal and neonatal outcomes .

How does climate change intersect with other inequalities for women and girls?

While women and girls experience disproportionate impacts from climate change at the global level, the effects are not uniform. Looking at climate change through the lens of intersectional feminism , the way in which various forms of inequality often operate together and exacerbate each other, it is clear that climate change risks are acute for indigenous and Afro-descendent women and girls, older women, LGBTIQ+ people, women and girls with disabilities, migrant women, and those living in rural, remote, conflict and disaster-prone areas.

“If you are invisible in everyday life, your needs will not be thought of, let alone addressed, in a crisis situation,” says Matcha Phorn-In , a lesbian feminist human-rights defender who works to empower stateless and landless Indigenous women, girls and young LGBTIQ+ people in Thailand’s Chiang Mai, Mae Hong Son, and Tak provinces. “Humanitarian programmes tend to be heteronormative and can reinforce the patriarchal structure of society if they do not take into account sexual and gender diversity,” Phorn-in explains. “In addressing structural change, we are advocating for and working towards equality of all kinds.”

In the Brazilian Amazon, Dandara Rudsan , a Black and trans activist and an environmental racism specialist in the Public Defender’s Office of Pará State, knows firsthand that centering the experiences and challenges faced by different groups illuminates the connections between all fights for justice and liberation.

“In the Amazon, defending human rights means fighting for the survival of people and the rainforest every day, but there is no hierarchy between agendas… To finance social movements in the Amazon is to finance the survival of these communities, these people, and the rainforest.”

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When will climate change turn life in the U.S. upside down?

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The words of explorer John Wesley Powell on the eve of his departure into the unexplored depths of the Grand Canyon in 1869 best describe how I see our path ahead as we brave the unknown rapids of climate change:

We are now ready to start our way down the Great Unknown. We have an unknown distance yet to run, an unknown river to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walls rise over the river, we know not. Ah, well! We may conjecture many things. The men talk as cheerfully as ever; jests are bandied about freely this morning; but to me the cheer is somber and the jests are ghastly.

Powell’s expedition made it through the canyon, but the explorers endured great hardship, suffering near-drownings, the destruction of two of their four boats, and the loss of much of their supplies. In the end, only six of the nine men survived.

Likewise, we find ourselves in an ever-deepening chasm of climate change impacts, forced to run a perilous course through dangerous rapids of unknown ferocity. Our path will be fraught with great peril, and there will be tremendous suffering, great loss of life, and the destruction of much that is precious.

It is inevitable that climate change will stop being a hazy future concern and will someday turn everyday life upside down. Very hard times are coming. At the risk of causing counterproductive climate anxiety and doomism, I offer here some observations and speculations on how the planetary crisis may play out, using my 45 years of experience as a meteorologist, including four years of flying with the Hurricane Hunters and 20 years blogging about extreme weather and climate change. The scenarios that I depict as the most likely are much harsher than what other experts might choose, but I’ve seen repeatedly that uncertainty is not our friend when it comes to climate change. This will be a long and intense ride, but if you stick through the end, I promise there will be a rainbow.

By late this century, I am optimistic that we will have successfully ridden the rapids of the climate crisis, emerging into a new era of non-polluting energy with a stabilizing climate. There are too many talented and dedicated people who understand the problem and are working hard on solutions for us to fail.

Jump to a section of this essay

What is a dangerous level of climate change, climate change’s impacts will be highly asymmetric, an immediate u.s. climate change threat: an insurance crisis, a second potential immediate u.s. climate change threat: a global food shock, “black swan” and “gray swan” extreme weather events, a “new normal” of extreme weather has not yet arrived, longer-range concerns: global catastrophic risk events, devastating impacts from climate change are accelerating, paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology, hope for the future via ‘cathedral thinking’.

Although there is a major climate change hurricane approaching, we’re busy throwing a hurricane party , charging up our planetary credit card to pay for the expenses, with little regard to the approaching storm that is already cutting off our escape routes. This great storm will fundamentally rip at the fabric of society, creating chaos and a crisis likely to last for many decades.

The intensifying climate change storm will soon reach a threshold I think of as a category 1 hurricane for humanity — when long-term global warming surpasses 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial temperatures, a value increasingly characterized over the last decade as “dangerous” climate change .

For humanity as a whole, this amount of warming is risky, but not devastating. Global warming is currently at about 1.2-1.3 degrees Celsius above preindustrial temperatures and is likely to cross the 1.5-degree threshold in the late 2020s or early 2030s .

Assuming that we don’t work exceptionally hard to reduce emissions in the next 10 years, the world is expected to reach 2 degrees Celsius of warming between 2045 and 2051. In my estimation, that will be akin to a major category 3 hurricane for humanity — devastating, but not catastrophic.

Allowing global warming to exceed 2.5 degrees Celsius will cause category 4-level damage to civilization — approaching the catastrophic level. And warming in excess of 3 degrees Celsius will likely be a catastrophic category 5-level superstorm of destruction that will crash civilization.

We must take strong action rapidly to rein in our emissions of heat-trapping gases to avoid that outcome — and build great resilience to the extreme climate of the 21st century that we have so foolishly brought upon ourselves.

According to the Carbon Action Tracker (see tweet below), we are on track for 2.7 degrees Celsius of warming; if the nations of the world meet their targets for reducing heat-trapping climate pollution, warming will be limited to 2.1 degrees. There’s a big difference between being hit by a Cat 4 versus a Cat 3, and every tenth of a degree of warming that we prevent will be critical.

Two years on from Glasgow and our warming estimates for government action have barely moved. Governments appear oblivious to the extreme events of the past year, somehow thinking treading water will deal with the flood of impacts? https://t.co/fbM4xY9OJe pic.twitter.com/MekGIeU1Z3 — ClimateActionTracker (@climateactiontr) December 5, 2023

As climate scientist Michael Mann explains in his latest book, “ Our Fragile Moment ,” great climate science communicator Stephen Schneider once said, “The ‘end of the world’ or ‘good for you’ are the two least likely among the spectrum of potential [climate] outcomes.” So forget sci-fi depictions of planetary apocalypse. That will not be our long-term climate change fate.

But the impacts of climate change will be apocalyptic for many nations and people — particularly those that are not rich and White. People and communities with the least resources tend to be the first and hardest hit by climate change , not only because poorer people and communities are inherently more vulnerable to the impacts of any disaster, but also because the extremes induced by climate change tend to be worse in the tropics and subtropics, home to many poor nations.

In the U.S., climate change has already turned life upside down for numerous communities. For example, in North Carolina, the financially strapped, Black-majority towns of Fair Bluff and Princeville are in danger of abandonment from hurricane-related flooding (from Hurricane Floyd in 1999, Matthew in 2016, and Florence in 2018). Seven Springs, North Carolina (population 207 in 1960, now just 55) is largely abandoned.

Climate change was a key contributor to these floods; a 2021 study found that about one-third of the cost of major U.S. flood events since 1988, totaling $79 billion, could be attributed to climate change. And for the town of Paradise, California — utterly destroyed by the devastating Camp Fire of 2018, which killed 85 and caused over $16 billion in damage — climate change has been apocalyptic.

In the U.S., the most likely major economic disruption from climate change over the next few years might well be a collapse of the housing market in flood-prone and wildfire-prone states. Billion-dollar weather disasters — which cause about 76% of all weather-related damages — have steadily increased in number and expense in recent years and would be even worse were it not for improved weather forecasts and better building codes. The recent increase in weather-disaster losses has brought on an insurance crisis — especially in Florida , Louisiana , California , and Texas — which threatens one of the bedrocks of the U.S. economy, the housing and real estate market.

In California, the insurer of last resort, the FAIR plan, had only about $250 million in cash on hand as of March 2024.

“One major fire near Lake Arrowhead, where the Plan holds $8 billion in policies, would plunge the whole scheme into insolvency,” observed Harvard’s Susan Crawford, author of “Charleston: Race, Water, and the Coming Storm.”

It is widely acknowledged that higher weather disaster losses result primarily from an increase in exposure : more people with more stuff moving into vulnerable places, including those at risk of floods. Martin Bertogg, Swiss Re’s head of catastrophic peril, said in a 2022 AP interview that two-thirds, perhaps more, of the recent rise in weather-related disaster losses is the result of more people and things in harm’s way.

But this balance will likely shift in the coming decades. Increased exposure will continue to drive increased weather disaster losses, but the fractional contribution of climate change to disaster losses — at least for wildfire, hurricane, and flood disasters — is likely to increase rapidly, making the insurance crisis accelerate.

A 2023 study (Fig. 2) drew attention to a massive real estate bubble in the U.S.: the vast number of properties whose purported value doesn’t account for the true costs of floods. The study estimated that across the U.S., residential properties are overvalued by a total of $121-$237 billion under current flood risks. This bubble will likely continue to grow as sea levels rise, storms dump heavier rains, and unwise risky development continues.

Likewise, U.S. properties at risk of wildfires are collectively overvalued by about $317 billion, according to David Burt , a financial guru who foresaw the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis. Insurers are already pulling out of the areas most at risk, threatening to make property ownership too expensive for millions and posing a serious threat to the economically critical real estate industry.

Climate futurist Alex Steffen has described the climate change-worsened real estate bubble this way:

As awareness of risk grows, the financial value of risky places drops. Where meeting that risk is more expensive than decision-makers think a place is worth, it simply won’t be defended. It will be unofficially abandoned. That will then create more problems. Bonds for big projects, loans, and mortgages, business investment, insurance, talented workers — all will grow more scarce. Then, value will crash, a phenomenon I call the Brittleness Bubble .

Something brittle is prone to a sudden, catastrophic failure and cannot easily be repaired once broken. The popping of the real estate Brittleness Bubble will potentially trigger panic selling and a housing market collapse like a miniature version of the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 but focused on the 20% of American homes in wildfire and flood risk zones. In his 2023 Congressional testimony , Burt estimated that a wildfire and flood-induced repricing of risk of the U.S. housing market could have a quarter to half the impact of the 2008 Great Financial Crisis.

However, the 2008 crisis was relatively short-lived, as fixes to the financial system and a massive federal bailout led to a rebound in property values after a few years. A climate change-induced housing crisis will likely be resistant to a similar fix because the underlying cause will worsen: Sea levels will continue to rise, flooding heavy rains will intensify, and wildfires will grow more severe, increasing risk.

Science writer Eugene Linden wrote in 2023, “as we saw in 2008, a housing crisis can quickly morph into a systemic financial crisis because banks own most of the value, and thus the risk, in housing and commercial real estate.”

Crawford of Harvard recently wrote : “Because insurance can help communities and households recover more quickly from disasters, and because so much of the U.S. economy is driven by spending on housing, the inaccessibility and unaffordability of insurance poses a threat to the stability of the entire economy.”

As Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse , a Democrat from Rhode Island, said earlier this year, “The thing about economic crises is that they come on slowly, until they come on fast.”

How the insurance crisis may play out: the “Wholly irrational and completely ad-hoc pirate capitalism” solution

In his blunt 2023 essay, “ Insurance Politics at the End of the World ,” journalist Hamilton Nolan offers these thoughts on the potential ways this climate change-induced insurance crisis could be addressed:

The rational capitalism solution here is: We accurately price your risk and that risk becomes unaffordable and people move away from areas that are stupid to live in and therefore climate adaptation is achieved. The rational socialism solution is: We collectively embrace the idea that we need to adapt to climate change and the federal government creates long-term programs that incentivize moving away from areas that are stupid to live in and disincentivize “build as much crap in South Florida flood zones as you can now to take advantage of the real estate bubble” and generally cushion the economic blow for all the people whose lives will have to change. The path we are on today, though — the path that our current political system makes likely — is the path of Wholly Irrational and Completely Ad-Hoc Pirate Capitalism: Increasing climate change-induced disasters cause panic among homeowners as a class; politicians rush to grab dollars to enable everyone to live the same as they are now for as long as possible; and eventually the whole thing crashes into the wall of reality in a way that causes uncontainable, national pain rather than just the specific, regional, temporary pain of the smarter solutions.

When will the Brittleness Bubble pop?

When might this “crash into the wall of reality” happen and the Brittleness Bubble pop? Politicians are working extremely hard to keep their jobs by delaying this day of reckoning, artificially limiting insurance rate rises and offering state-run insurance plans of last resort. This approach — the equivalent of giving a blood transfusion to the injured, without stopping the bleeding — does not fix the underlying problem and all but guarantees that the pain of the eventual national reckoning will be much larger. Insurance is designed to transfer risk, but risk is rising everywhere.

As the hurricane season is set to begin soon and wildfire risk gradually increasing, private insurers in some states are fleeing areas considered at high risk. It's leaving so-called "residual," or last resort plans, to pick up the tab. https://t.co/3sxv9m0FOS pic.twitter.com/YTkZ9OlJE3 — Axios (@axios) May 10, 2024

Crawford addressed the issue in a 2024 essay, “ Who ends up holding the bag when risky real estate markets collapse? ” Citing financial guru Burt, she concluded: “2025 or 2026 is when things give way and it becomes very difficult to offload houses and buildings in risky places where mortgages are suddenly hard to get, much less insurance.” When asked in an interview with Marketplace if the market is due for another correction, as homeowners in places with growing risk of flooding and wildfire have to pay more for insurance, Burt said:

This is actually happening right now and is probably going to happen over the next three to five years, like a full reckoning of these new costs for 15 or 20% of the homes in the U.S. … If all their equity is already gone [because of lowered property values], their costs are going up a ton, they can barely afford it, that’s when people walk away.

In the same Marketplace story, though, Ben Keys, a professor of real estate and finance at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, said, “The idea that we would expect there to be a huge wave of defaults or delinquencies feels relatively unlikely.”

But like Burt, climate change futurist Steffen predicts the real estate Brittleness Bubble will pop within five years (10 at the most).

I suspect we're less than 5 years away from a prolonged surge of value loss in real estate assets based on risk, insurability, economic brittleness and local capacities to ruggedize (or not). That kind of devaluation will echo through the whole economy. https://t.co/Qs0zyMS38g — Alex Steffen (@AlexSteffen) May 21, 2024

This reckoning could come sooner for Florida if another $100-billion hurricane hits. The Florida insurance and coastal property market did manage to withstand the $117-billion cost of Category 4 Hurricane Ian of 2022, but another blow like that might well cause a severe downward spiral in the Florida real estate market from which it might never fully recover. This vulnerability was underscored by Florida Gov. DeSantis during a 2023 radio interview with a Boston host, when DeSantis suggested homeowners should “ knock on wood ” and hope the state didn’t get hit by a hurricane in 2024.

But “knocking on wood” is not an effective climate adaptation strategy for Florida. Because of climate change, Mother Nature is now able to whip heavier bowling balls with more devastating impact down Hurricane Alley. It’s only a matter of time before she hurls a strike into a major Florida city, causing an intensified coastal real estate and insurance crisis. And the odds of such a strike are higher than average in 2024 because of record-warm ocean temperatures in the tropical Atlantic, combined with a developing La Niña event.

Watch out for increased coastal flooding in the mid-2030s

We may manage to avoid a coastal real estate market crash in the next 10 years if we get lucky with hurricanes and if our politicians continue to pump huge amounts of money to bail out the failing system.

But it will become increasingly difficult to keep the coastal property market propped up beginning in the mid-2030s, because of accelerating sea level rise combined with an 18.6-year wobble in the moon’s orbit. Thus, I expect that the longest we might stave off the popping of the coastal real estate Brittleness Bubble is 15 years.

As I wrote in my 2023 post, 30 great tools to determine your flood risk in the U.S. , beginning in 2033, the moon will be in a position favorable for bringing higher tides to locations where one high tide and low tide per day dominate. This will bring a rapid increase in high tide flooding to the coasts of the Gulf of Mexico, the Southeast, the West Coast, and Hawaii. This expected acceleration in the mid-2030s is obvious for St. Petersburg (Fig. 3), plotted using NASA’s Flooding Analysis Tool and Flooding Days Projection Tool . The rapid acceleration in coastal flooding simultaneously along a huge swathe of heavily developed U.S. coast in the mid-2030s will be sure to significantly stress the coastal housing market. And according to the Coastal Flood Resilience Project , the nation is flying blind on the possible impacts: There are no national assessments of the potential loss of major, critical infrastructure assets to coastal storms and rising seas.

Another immediate danger: a series of global extreme weather events affecting agriculture, causing global economic turmoil.

In my 2024 post, “ What are the odds that extreme weather will lead to a global food shock? ” I reviewed a 2023 report by insurance giant Lloyd’s, which modeled the odds of a globally disruptive extreme food shock event bringing simultaneous droughts in key global food-growing breadbaskets. The authors estimated that a “major” food shock scenario costing $3 trillion globally over a five-year period had a 2.3% chance of happening per year (Fig. 4). Over a 30-year period, those odds equate to about a 50% probability of occurrence — assuming the risks are not increasing each year, which, in fact, they are.

Yet another concern for the U.S. is the risk of wholly unanticipated “black swan” extreme weather events that scientists didn’t see coming. As Harvard climate scientists Paul Epstein and James McCarthy wrote in a 2004 paper, “Assessing Climate Instability”: “We are already observing signs of instability within the climate system. There is no assurance that the rate of greenhouse gas buildup will not force the system to oscillate erratically and yield significant and punishing surprises.”

One example of such a punishing surprise was Superstorm Sandy of 2012, that unholy hybrid spawn of a Caribbean hurricane/extratropical storm that became the largest hurricane ever observed and one of the most damaging, costing $88 billion. And who anticipated that a siege of climate-change-intensified wildfires in western North America beginning in 2017, causing multiple summers of horrific air quality that would significantly degrade the quality of life in the West? Or the jet stream experiencing a sudden increase in unusually extreme configurations over the past 20 years, leading to prolonged periods of intense extreme weather over multiple portions of the globe simultaneously? As the late climate scientist Wally Broecker once said, “Climate is an angry beast, and we are poking at it with sticks.”

Just as concerning might be future “gray swan” events — extreme weather events that climate models anticipate could happen but exceed anything in the historical record. (“Gray swan” is an expression first coined by hurricane scientist Kerry Emanuel in his 2016 paper, “ Grey swan tropical cyclones .”) Several potential gray swan events I have written about include a $1 trillion California “ARkStorm” flood , the potential failure of the Old River Control Structure during an extreme flood that allows the Mississippi River to change course, or a storm like 2015’s Hurricane Patricia , with winds over 200 mph, hitting Miami, Galveston/Houston, Tampa, or New Orleans. The risk of gray swan events is steadily increasing.

I’m often asked if the absurdly extreme weather events we’ve been experiencing recently are the new normal. “No!” I reply. “Heat is energy, so the energy to fuel more intense extreme weather events will increase until we reach net-zero emissions. At that time, the climate will finally stabilize at a new normal with a highly dangerous level of extreme weather events.”

Barring a series of extraordinary volcanic eruptions or a major geoengineering effort, even under an optimistic “low” emissions climate scenario, the earliest the climate might stabilize is in the mid-2070s (Fig. 5); thus, the weather will grow more extreme, on average, for at least the next 50 years. Considering that CO2 emissions have not yet peaked and may be following the “Intermediate” pathway shown below, there is considerable danger that the weather will still be growing more extreme when today’s children are very old early next century. But even when net zero emissions are reached, sea level rise will continue to occur at a pace difficult to adapt to, and the climate crisis will continue to intensify.

The high probability that the weather will grow more extreme throughout the lifetime of everybody reading this essay means that we have to take seriously some very bad long-term threats. As I wrote in my 2022 post, “ The future of global catastrophic risk events from climate change ,” a global catastrophic risk event is defined as a catastrophe global in impact that kills over 10 million people or causes over $10 trillion (2022 USD) in damage. Since the beginning of the 20th century, there have been only three such events: World War I, World War II, and the COVID-19 pandemic. But climate change is a threat multiplier, increasing the risk of five types of global catastrophic risk events:

• Coastal flooding from sea-level rise and land subsidence
• Collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), the powerful currents that circulate warm water in the tropical Atlantic Ocean to the Arctic and back (an August 2024 study gave a 59% chance of an AMOC collapse occurring before 2050)

The likeliest of these is a global catastrophic risk event from sea level rise, which is highly likely to occur by the end of the century. For example, a moderate global warming scenario will put $7.9-12.7 trillion dollars of global coastal assets at risk of flooding from sea level rise by 2100, according to a 2020 study, “ Projections of global-scale extreme sea levels and resulting episodic coastal flooding over the 21st century .” Although this study did not take into account assets that inevitably will be protected by new coastal defenses, neither did it consider the indirect costs of sea level rise from increased storm surge damage, mass migration away from the coast, increased saltiness of fresh water supplies, and many other factors. A 2019 report by the Global Commission on Adaptation estimated that sea level rise will lead to damages of more than $1 trillion per year globally by 2050.

Furthermore, sea level rise, combined with other stressors, might bring about megacity collapse — a frightening possibility when infrastructure destruction, salinification of freshwater resources, and a real estate collapse potentially combine to create a mass exodus of people from a major city, reducing its tax base to the point that it can no longer provide basic services. The collapse of even one megacity might have severe impacts on the global economy, creating increased chances of a cascade of global catastrophic risk events. One megacity potentially at risk of this fate is the capital of Indonesia, Jakarta, with a population of 10 million. Land subsidence of up to two inches per year and sea level rise of about an eighth of an inch per year are causing so much flooding in Jakarta that Indonesia is constructing a new capital city in Borneo.

Is the #AMOC approaching a tipping point? Here's my take after researching this topic for over 30 years. Open access, peer-reviewed, in full colour & understandable for non-experts. https://t.co/gMu6Zw5mR7 pic.twitter.com/mrgzO9NMxR — Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf 🌏 🦣 (@rahmstorf) April 11, 2024

I also expect one or more climate change-amplified global catastrophic risk events from drought will occur this century. Mexico City, with a metro area population of 22 million, has suffered record heat over the past year, is in danger of its reservoirs running dry, and is drilling ever-deeper wells to tap an overtaxed aquifer. Though the city will muddle through the crisis now that the summer rains have come this year, what is the plan for 30 years from now, when the climate is expected to be drier and much, much hotter? Although Mexico City can greatly improve its water situation by fixing a poorly maintained system that has a 40% loss rate , it is unclear how the city will be able to survive the much hotter and drier climate of 30 years from now. And at least 10 other major cities are in a similar bind.

Technology can help us adapt to a hotter climate by providing air conditioning (if you are rich enough), but technological solutions to create more water availability when the taps run dry are much more difficult to achieve. I believe water shortages will drive a partial collapse of and mass migration out of multiple major cities 20-40 years from now, significantly amplifying global political and economic turmoil. For example, a 2010 study, “ Linkages among climate change, crop yields and Mexico-US cross-border migration ,” found that a 10% reduction in crop yields in Mexico leads to an additional 2% of the population emigrating to the United States.

In his frightening 2019 book “ Food or War ,” science writer Julian Cribb documents 25 food conflicts that have led to famine, war, and the deaths of more than a million people — mostly caused by drought. Since 1960, Cribb says, 40-60% of armed conflicts have been linked to resource scarcity, and 80% of major armed conflicts occurred in vulnerable dry ecosystems. Hungry people are not peaceful people, Cribb argues.

Though climate change itself is not accelerating faster than what climate scientists and climate models predicted , devastating impacts from climate change do seem to be accelerating. That is because the new climate is crossing thresholds beyond which an infrastructure designed for the 20th century can withstand. These breaches are occurring in tandem with an increase in exposure — more people with more stuff living in harm’s way — which is the dominant cause of the sharp increase in weather-disaster losses in recent years. It’s sobering to realize that the current U.S. insurance crisis has primarily been driven by increased exposure and foolish insurance policies that promote development in risky places — not climate change — and that climate change’s relative contribution to the crisis is set to grow significantly.

Accelerating sea level rise alone is sure to cause a massive shock to the U.S. economy; according to a 2022 report from NOAA , sea level along the U.S. coastline is projected to rise, on average, 10-12 inches (0.25-0.30 meters) in the next 30 years (2020-2050), which will be as much as the rise measured over the last 100 years (1920-2020). At this level, 13.6 million homes might be at risk of flooding by 2051 , triggering a mass migration of millions of people away from the coast.

If we add to sea-level-rise-induced migration the additional migration that will result from climate change-intensified wildfires, heatwaves, and hurricanes, we are forced to acknowledge the reality that a nation-challenging Hurricane Katrina-level climate change storm has already begun in the U.S., one which has the potential to cause catastrophic damage. As I wrote in my June post, The U.S. is finally making serious efforts to adapt to climate change , there have been some encouraging efforts to prepare for the coming mass migration. But, as I argued in my follow-up post, The U.S. is nowhere near ready for climate change , we remain woefully unprepared for what is coming.

And my subsequent post, Can a colossal extreme weather event galvanize action on the climate crisis? , argues that we should not expect that any future extreme weather event or breakdown of the climate system will galvanize the type of response needed — we’ve already had at least 13 events since 1988 that should have done so, yet have not. Even if such an event did prompt strong, transformative change, it’s too late to avoid having life turned upside-down by climate change. It’s like we’ve waited until our skin started getting red before seeking shade from the sun, and we’re only now taking our first stumbling steps toward shade. Well, it’s a long hike to shade, and a blistering sunburn is unavoidable.

Given the unprecedented nature and complexity of this planetary crisis, there is huge uncertainty on how this drama may unfold; there are climate scientists who offer a more optimistic outlook than I do (for example, Hannah Ritchie , author of “Not the End of the World”), and those who are more pessimistic ( James Hansen ).

I suggest that you make the most of the current “calm before the storm” and prepare for the chaotic times ahead, which could begin at any time. I will offer my recommendations on how to do this in my next post in this series, “What should you do to prepare for the climate change storm?”

The urgency to rapidly deal with the climate crisis was succinctly summarized by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its latest summary report: “There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all.”

But taking advantage of that window of opportunity is difficult because of human psychological and political realities. In climate scientist Peter Gleick’s 2023 book, “The Three Ages of Water,” he quotes Harvard’s E.O. Wilson, father of sociobiology, who perhaps said it best: “The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.”

The boat of civilization has already hit multiple rocks along the rapids of climate change and is taking on water. Perilous rapids with even more dangerous rocks and waterfalls lie before us, but the course of our boat cannot be so easily altered to avoid the rocks, because of our Paleolithic emotions and medieval institutions. As a result, we may have only a few more years — or perhaps as long as 15 years — of relative normalcy in our everyday lives here in the U.S. before the approaching climate change storm ends our golden age of prosperity. But this “golden age” was made of fool’s gold, paid for with wealth plundered from future generations.

Though this essay has dwelt on some grim realities, I am optimistic that we will prevent climate change from becoming a civilization-destroying category 5-level catastrophe. But we must fight extremely hard to correct the course of our boat and not allow its inertia to carry us into the rocks that stud the rapids of climate change. This is not a task that can be accomplished in our lifetimes.

Susan Joy Hassol, the climate communication veteran who served as a senior science writer on three National Climate Assessments, put it this way in an interview with Yale Climate Connections contributor Daisy Simmons: “This is the fight of our lives, and it’s a multigenerational task. We need what’s been called ‘cathedral thinking.’ That is, the people who started working on that stone foundation , they never saw the thing finished. It took generations to get these major works done. This is that kind of problem. And we have to all do our part. The more I act, the better I feel, because I know I’m part of the solution.”

Actions we take now will yield enormous future benefits, and the faster we undertake transformative actions to adapt to the new climate reality, the less suffering will occur. The Global Commission on Adaptation says that “every $1 invested in adaptation could yield up to $10 in net economic benefits, depending on the activity.” We should work to build our cathedral of the future with the thought that each action we take now will multiply by a factor of 10 in importance in the future.

An excellent @nytimes article on rapid growth of wind, solar, & EVs, including factories, in the US. Costs are below fossil and nuclear (see graphs). Reasons why, graphs with how fast, pictures of it happening. https://t.co/uglQDnE97t pic.twitter.com/oIpLmlp28v — Willett Kempton (@WillettKempton) September 5, 2023

But some of the hardest work has been done: The cornerstone of this cathedral of the future has already been laid. The clean energy revolution is here and has progressed far more rapidly than I had dared hope. Passage of the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and 2023 Inflation Reduction Act has been instrumental in getting this cornerstone laid. Solar energy is now the cheapest source of energy in world history, and the costs of wind power and battery technology have also plummeted. Two recent reports were optimistic that climate-warming carbon dioxide emissions had finally peaked in 2023, and GDP growth has decoupled from carbon dioxide emissions in recent years, giving hope that economic growth can still occur without making the planet hotter.

At its heart, the root of the climate crisis is humanity’s spiritual inharmoniousness: We overvalue the pursuit of material wealth and we worship billionaires but undervalue growing more connected to our spiritual selves and acting to preserve and appreciate the natural systems that sustain us. Making yourself more peaceful and loving through quiet spiritual pursuits and time spent in nature will help counteract the anxiety and fear sparked by the climate crisis. But in tandem with your increased peace must come a righteous anger to “throw the money changers out of the temple” and topple the might of the fossil fuel industry and its enablers.

So put your shoulder to an oar! Help us power the boat of civilization through the rapids of climate change. All of humanity shares the same boat, and you have the opportunity to make your own unique and valuable contribution to the effort.

This is a nice way to visualize the pathway to your unique climate action. https://t.co/cjlv5XXrak — Jeff Masters (@DrJeffMasters) May 15, 2024

As promised, here is the rainbow at the end. It’s the intro image from my first and last Weather Underground blog posts, “ The 360-degree Rainbow ,” and “ So long, wunderground! ” My unique and valuable contribution to building our new cathedral has not yet reached the end of the rainbow, for a rainbow has no end — it is a full circle. One just has to fly high in a rainstorm where the sun is shining to see it.

I will continue to make my voice heard as long as climate science-denying politicians, corporations, media pundits, and wealthy individuals continue to row the boat of civilization into the rocks of climate-change catastrophe. I encourage those of you who have learned about extreme weather and climate change from me to do the same. To get started, learn from one of the best communicators in the business, climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe :

Recommended reading:

• What should you do to prepare for the climate change storm?
• Can a colossal extreme weather event galvanize action on the climate crisis?
• The U.S. is nowhere near ready for climate change
• The U.S. is finally making serious efforts to adapt to climate change
• Book review: “On the Move” is a must-read account of U.S. climate migration
• Book review: “The Great Displacement” is a must-read
• Part one of my three-part sea level rise series: How fast are the seas rising?
• Part two of my three-part sea level rise series: Eight excellent books on sea level rise risk for U.S. cities
• Part three of my three-part sea level rise series: 30 great tools to determine your flood risk in the U.S.
• Bubble trouble: Climate change is creating a huge and growing U.S. real estate bubble
• Many coastal residents willing to relocate in the face of sea level rise
• Disasterology: a book review
• The future of global catastrophic risk events from climate change
• With global warming of just 1.2°C, why has the weather gotten so extreme?
• Recklessness defined: breaking 6 of 9 planetary boundaries of safety
• Retreat From a Rising Sea: A book review
• Quick facts on climate change, extreme weather-related events, and their impacts on society
• Susan Crawford’s Substack feed on climate adaptation policy, Moving Day
• Climate futurist Alex Steffen’s newsletter

Susan Joy Hassol ( @ClimateComms ) and Bob Henson ( @bhensonweather ) provided helpful edits for this post.

We help millions of people understand climate change and what to do about it. Help us reach even more people like you.

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Climate Change: Evidence and Causes: Update 2020 (2020)

Chapter: conclusion, c onclusion.

This document explains that there are well-understood physical mechanisms by which changes in the amounts of greenhouse gases cause climate changes. It discusses the evidence that the concentrations of these gases in the atmosphere have increased and are still increasing rapidly, that climate change is occurring, and that most of the recent change is almost certainly due to emissions of greenhouse gases caused by human activities. Further climate change is inevitable; if emissions of greenhouse gases continue unabated, future changes will substantially exceed those that have occurred so far. There remains a range of estimates of the magnitude and regional expression of future change, but increases in the extremes of climate that can adversely affect natural ecosystems and human activities and infrastructure are expected.

Citizens and governments can choose among several options (or a mixture of those options) in response to this information: they can change their pattern of energy production and usage in order to limit emissions of greenhouse gases and hence the magnitude of climate changes; they can wait for changes to occur and accept the losses, damage, and suffering that arise; they can adapt to actual and expected changes as much as possible; or they can seek as yet unproven “geoengineering” solutions to counteract some of the climate changes that would otherwise occur. Each of these options has risks, attractions and costs, and what is actually done may be a mixture of these different options. Different nations and communities will vary in their vulnerability and their capacity to adapt. There is an important debate to be had about choices among these options, to decide what is best for each group or nation, and most importantly for the global population as a whole. The options have to be discussed at a global scale because in many cases those communities that are most vulnerable control few of the emissions, either past or future. Our description of the science of climate change, with both its facts and its uncertainties, is offered as a basis to inform that policy debate.

A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The following individuals served as the primary writing team for the 2014 and 2020 editions of this document:

• Eric Wolff FRS, (UK lead), University of Cambridge
• Inez Fung (NAS, US lead), University of California, Berkeley
• Brian Hoskins FRS, Grantham Institute for Climate Change
• John F.B. Mitchell FRS, UK Met Office
• Tim Palmer FRS, University of Oxford
• Benjamin Santer (NAS), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
• John Shepherd FRS, University of Southampton
• Keith Shine FRS, University of Reading.
• Susan Solomon (NAS), Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Kevin Trenberth, National Center for Atmospheric Research
• John Walsh, University of Alaska, Fairbanks
• Don Wuebbles, University of Illinois

Staff support for the 2020 revision was provided by Richard Walker, Amanda Purcell, Nancy Huddleston, and Michael Hudson. We offer special thanks to Rebecca Lindsey and NOAA Climate.gov for providing data and figure updates.

The following individuals served as reviewers of the 2014 document in accordance with procedures approved by the Royal Society and the National Academy of Sciences:

• Richard Alley (NAS), Department of Geosciences, Pennsylvania State University
• Alec Broers FRS, Former President of the Royal Academy of Engineering
• Harry Elderfield FRS, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge
• Joanna Haigh FRS, Professor of Atmospheric Physics, Imperial College London
• Isaac Held (NAS), NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory
• John Kutzbach (NAS), Center for Climatic Research, University of Wisconsin
• Jerry Meehl, Senior Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research
• John Pendry FRS, Imperial College London
• John Pyle FRS, Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge
• Gavin Schmidt, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
• Emily Shuckburgh, British Antarctic Survey
• Gabrielle Walker, Journalist
• Andrew Watson FRS, University of East Anglia

The Support for the 2014 Edition was provided by NAS Endowment Funds. We offer sincere thanks to the Ralph J. and Carol M. Cicerone Endowment for NAS Missions for supporting the production of this 2020 Edition.

F OR FURTHER READING

For more detailed discussion of the topics addressed in this document (including references to the underlying original research), see:

• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2019: Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate [ https://www.ipcc.ch/srocc ]
• National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), 2019: Negative Emissions Technologies and Reliable Sequestration: A Research Agenda [ https://www.nap.edu/catalog/25259 ]
• Royal Society, 2018: Greenhouse gas removal [ https://raeng.org.uk/greenhousegasremoval ]
• U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), 2018: Fourth National Climate Assessment Volume II: Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States [ https://nca2018.globalchange.gov ]
• IPCC, 2018: Global Warming of 1.5°C [ https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15 ]
• USGCRP, 2017: Fourth National Climate Assessment Volume I: Climate Science Special Reports [ https://science2017.globalchange.gov ]
• NASEM, 2016: Attribution of Extreme Weather Events in the Context of Climate Change [ https://www.nap.edu/catalog/21852 ]
• IPCC, 2013: Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) Working Group 1. Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis [ https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1 ]
• NRC, 2013: Abrupt Impacts of Climate Change: Anticipating Surprises [ https://www.nap.edu/catalog/18373 ]
• NRC, 2011: Climate Stabilization Targets: Emissions, Concentrations, and Impacts Over Decades to Millennia [ https://www.nap.edu/catalog/12877 ]
• Royal Society 2010: Climate Change: A Summary of the Science [ https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/publications/2010/climate-change-summary-science ]
• NRC, 2010: America’s Climate Choices: Advancing the Science of Climate Change [ https://www.nap.edu/catalog/12782 ]

Much of the original data underlying the scientific findings discussed here are available at:

• https://data.ucar.edu/
• https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu
• https://iridl.ldeo.columbia.edu
• https://ess-dive.lbl.gov/
• https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/
• https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
• http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu
• http://hahana.soest.hawaii.edu/hot/

Climate change is one of the defining issues of our time. It is now more certain than ever, based on many lines of evidence, that humans are changing Earth's climate. The Royal Society and the US National Academy of Sciences, with their similar missions to promote the use of science to benefit society and to inform critical policy debates, produced the original Climate Change: Evidence and Causes in 2014. It was written and reviewed by a UK-US team of leading climate scientists. This new edition, prepared by the same author team, has been updated with the most recent climate data and scientific analyses, all of which reinforce our understanding of human-caused climate change.

Scientific information is a vital component for society to make informed decisions about how to reduce the magnitude of climate change and how to adapt to its impacts. This booklet serves as a key reference document for decision makers, policy makers, educators, and others seeking authoritative answers about the current state of climate-change science.

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The Case for a Clean Energy Marshall Plan

How the fight against climate change can renew american leadership, by brian deese.

For decades, global integration—of trade, of politics, of technology—was seen as a natural law. Today, integration has been replaced by fragmentation. The post–Cold War institutions are teetering, industrial strategies are back in vogue, and competition with China is growing. These dynamics are creating geopolitical friction across global supply chains, for vehicles, minerals, computer chips, and more.

Against this backdrop, the clean energy transition remains the most important planetary challenge. It also presents the greatest economic opportunity: it will be the largest capital formation event in human history. And it presents the United States with a chance to lead. Thanks to its still unparalleled power and influence, Washington maintains a unique capacity—and a strategic imperative—to shape world outcomes.

In 2022, the United States recognized these opportunities when it passed the Inflation Reduction Act, the world’s largest-ever investment in clean energy technologies. This transformative industrial strategy was a crucial first step for the United States in positioning its economy for success by accelerating the clean energy transition at home. Now is the time to take this leadership to the global stage, in a way that promotes U.S. interests and supports aligned countries. But the United States need not create a new model for doing so.

Seventy-six years ago, also facing a fractured world order and an emerging superpower competitor, U.S. President Harry Truman and U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall launched an ambitious effort to rebuild European societies and economies. Although often associated with free-market neoliberalism, the 1948 Marshall Plan was hardly laissez-faire. It was, in fact, an industrial strategy that established the United States as a generous partner to European allies while promoting U.S. industries and interests. Generations later, the Marshall Plan is rightly understood as one of the great successes of the postwar era.

Although today’s challenges are undoubtedly different, the United States should draw lessons from that postwar period and launch a new Marshall Plan, this time for the global transition to clean energy. Just as the Marshall Plan assisted those countries most ravaged by World War II, the new Marshall Plan should aim to help countries most vulnerable to the effects of climate change: the United States’ partners in the developing world. Developing countries and emerging markets will need access to cheap capital and technology to transition away from fossil fuels quickly enough to halt global warming.

The United States again has the chance to help others while helping itself. Putting its own burgeoning industries front and center in the energy transition will generate further innovation and growth. Clean energy investment in the United States reached about 7.4 percent of private fixed investment in structures and equipment in the first quarter of this year, at $40 billion, up from $16 billion in the first quarter of 2021. Investment in emerging energy technologies—such as hydrogen power and carbon capture and storage—jumped by 1,000 percent from 2022 to 2023. Manufacturing investment in the battery supply chain went up nearly 200 percent over the same period. By creating global markets for its own clean energy industries and innovators, the United States can scale these economic gains and strengthen domestic support for an energy shift that has not always been an easy sell to voters.

The fracturing world order and the ominous climate crisis lead some observers to focus on the potential tensions between those two developments. But they also provide an opening for the United States to deploy its innovation and capital in a generous, pragmatic, and unapologetically pro-American way—by launching a Clean Energy Marshall Plan.

THE SINCEREST FORM OF FLATTERY

Gauzy invocations of the Marshall Plan often induce eye rolling, and with good reason. In U.S. policy circles, commentators have called for a new Marshall Plan for everything from ending global poverty to rebuilding Ukraine. The term has become shorthand for a response to any problem that mobilizes public resources to achieve an ambitious end. But this overuse has blurred the substance of what the Marshall Plan really was—and was not.

The Marshall Plan was not, as many assume, born solely out of visionary ideals of international unity after the horrors of World War II. Instead, it reflected the pragmatic constraints of a fracturing, uncertain world order. In the spring of 1947, having returned from China after a failed attempt to head off a communist takeover there, Marshall was left to grapple with the newly emerged Iron Curtain in Europe. The shifting geopolitical reality forced Truman and Marshall to consider how to exert U.S. leadership to shape the world for good—to forge peace, rebuild cities, and promote American values in the face of communism. But they clearly recognized the limits of hard power and understood that economic stability could yield geopolitical stability.

Fundamentally, the Marshall Plan was an industrial strategy that deployed public dollars to advance U.S. manufacturing and industrial capabilities in service of reconstructing Europe. Washington spent $13 billion—equivalent to $200 billion today—over four years, mostly in the form of grants to discount the European purchase of goods and services. Because U.S. companies were at the center of the program, 70 percent of European expenditures of Marshall Plan funds were used to buy products made in the United States. Italy, for example, used Marshall Plan funds to buy American drilling technology, pipes, and other industrial equipment to rebuild its energy sector—including the equipment needed to restart Europe’s first commercial geothermal plant, powered by steam from lava beds in Tuscany. By 1950, that region had more than doubled its geothermal capacity and remained a major contributor to Italy’s total power demand.

The adoption of low-cost clean energy technologies is not self-executing.

The structure of the Marshall Plan allowed it to meet Europe’s pressing needs while winning over a skeptical and war-weary American public. Because there was little appetite for providing foreign aid following World War II, Marshall and Truman centered their plan on Americans’ economic interests. The country’s industrial capabilities had grown considerably during the war, but after the war, the task was to find new markets for them. As the plan’s chief administrator, Paul Hoffman, explained, the goal was to turn Europe into a “consumer of American goods” at a time when postwar U.S. GDP had fallen precipitously and exports were imperiled by a moribund European economy. The Marshall Plan would thus help American companies and save American jobs.

To sell the plan to the public, its architects and supporters launched a public relations campaign, squarely anchoring their case in these core U.S. economic interests. In the ten months after Marshall’s June 1947 speech introducing the plan, it gained traction, securing a 75 percent public approval rating and winning over a majority of the U.S. Congress—in an election year and with a divided government to boot.

Yet even though the Marshall Plan was attuned to U.S. economic interests, its architects recognized that it was important for the United States to be a generous, reliable partner to U.S. allies. The plan helped Europe rise from the rubble, pay off its debts, refill its foreign exchange reserves, recover its industrial production and agricultural output, adopt new technologies, and build goodwill for the United States, all while reducing the appeal of communism. By filling a financing gap that no other power could, the United States cemented its transatlantic partnerships. And by supporting its own economy, it became a capable and reliable global partner.

THE CHEAPER, THE BETTER

Like the original Marshall Plan, a Clean Energy Marshall Plan should meet other countries’ development needs while advancing U.S. interests. In this case, the goal is to speed the adoption of low-cost, zero-carbon solutions, such as the manufacture of batteries, the deployment of nuclear and geothermal energy, and the processing of critical minerals. This approach reflects the basic intuition that, as useful as it can be to make carbon pollution more expensive by putting a price on it, the most credible way to accelerate the adoption of zero-carbon technologies is to make that technology cheap and widely available.

The Inflation Reduction Act embodies this theory: it created long-term public incentives that promote the innovation and deployment of a variety of clean energy technologies. This public investment is already transforming the U.S. energy industry, and it holds even more potential for global energy markets. By driving down the cost of clean energy technologies—particularly innovative technologies such as nuclear power and carbon capture—the IRA could generate up to $120 billion in global savings by 2030. The resulting uptake of clean energy technologies in emerging markets could ultimately yield emission reductions in the rest of the world that would be two to four times as large as those achieved in the United States.

But the adoption of low-cost clean energy technologies is not self-executing. Without U.S. leadership, the world will simply not do enough fast enough to limit the worst effects of global warming. Unfortunately, the United States has yet to offer a full-throated answer to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the $1 trillion infrastructure project Beijing designed to expand its influence across the globe. And now, some leaders in China are calling for Beijing to go even further and develop a Marshall Plan–style approach to drive clean energy adoption in developing countries. Meanwhile, other players are also stepping up where the United States has not. For all the controversy about the United Arab Emirates—a fossil fuel nation—hosting last year’s UN climate conference, it is notable that it was the UAE, and not the United States, that proposed a large funding effort aimed at scaling zero-carbon technology to appropriate levels for emerging markets.

Ceding this space is a failure of American leadership and a missed economic opportunity. Skepticism of the United States, exacerbated by its handling of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, is already high in Southeast Asia and across the developing world, where Washington cannot afford to see alliances fray. And when countries there look to China or the UAE for capital and technology, American innovators and workers lose ground.

Implementing a Clean Energy Marshall Plan won’t be easy, but the process must begin now. As after World War II, the United States can be generous as well as pro-American in its approach. It can promote U.S. interests by scaling its industries to meet global needs while winning greater influence in this new geopolitical landscape. And it can meet developing countries where they are—supplying them with the energy they need to expand their economies and the innovation they need to decarbonize efficiently.

To accomplish these aims, however, Washington needs a clear mandate, adequate resources, and flexible tools. And it will need to enact a strategy that does three things: finances foreign deployment of U.S. clean energy technology, secures more resilient supply chains, and creates a new, more balanced trade regime that encourages the development and implementation of clean energy technology.

HOMEGROWN ADVANTAGES

The United States should begin with a focused investment and commercial diplomacy effort, akin to that of the Marshall Plan. The Marshall Plan had a straightforward aim: subsidize European demand for U.S. products and services needed to rebuild Europe. Today, the United States should establish a Clean Energy Finance Authority with an updated mission: subsidize foreign demand for clean energy technology and put American innovation and industry at the front of the line.

This new body would enable the United States to participate in foreign deals that promote U.S. innovation and production while reducing emissions. The purpose would be to reduce the premium that emerging-market economies must pay to meet their energy needs in a low-carbon way. To receive U.S. investments, governments and private sectors in these countries would themselves need to invest in clean energy. The promise of reliable U.S. support would prompt reform.

The good news is that most of the technologies necessary, from solar power to battery storage to wind turbines, are already commercially scalable. Other technologies are now scaling up rapidly, thanks to U.S. investment. For example, the United States has used its existing drilling capacity to become the world’s leading producer of advanced geothermal energy. It is well positioned to leverage its homegrown advantages to export geothermal components to geopolitically important markets in Southeast Asia and Africa and beyond, where sources of reliable power are needed. And the more these technologies are deployed, the more costs will come down, as processes become more efficient with scale. With patient capital, the dividends will be manifold: steady, clean power; faster-growing markets; diversified supply chains; and support for hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs. Similar opportunities exist for advanced nuclear and hydrogen power and carbon capture.

The United States has yet to offer a full-throated answer to the Belt and Road Initiative.

To be effective, the Clean Energy Finance Authority would need to be big yet nimble. Not only has the United States lagged other countries in offering public capital to lead the energy transition, but its financial support is also unnecessarily inflexible. Officials in foreign capitals joke that the United States shows up with a 100-page list of conditions, whereas China shows up with a blank check. The United States’ current financing authorities are constrained by byzantine rules that block U.S. investment that could advance its national interests.

For example, the U.S. Development Finance Corporation, which invests in projects in lower- and middle-income countries, cannot invest in lithium processing projects in Chile because it is considered a high-income country, yet companies in the low-income Democratic Republic of the Congo often find it impossible to meet the DFC’s stringent labor standards. Meanwhile, Chinese companies invested over $200 million in a Chilean lithium plant in 2023 and gained rights to explore Congolese lithium mines the same year. Of course, U.S. finance must continue to reflect American values, but there is still room for far greater flexibility in the name of national interest and the energy transition.

Promising models for a Clean Energy Finance Authority also exist. Domestically, the Department of Energy’s Loan Program Office rapidly expanded its capabilities, approving 11 investment commitments to companies totaling $18 billion in the past two fiscal years (versus just two commitments in the three years before that). Internationally, the DFC expanded its climate lending from less than $500 million to nearly $4 billion over the last three years. And the United States has supported creative financial partnerships with several countries. In Egypt, for example, the United States and Germany committed $250 million to stimulate $10 billion of private capital to accelerate the Egyptian energy transition.

The most effective aspects of these examples should be harnessed together under the Clean Energy Finance Authority, which should have a versatile financial toolkit, including the ability to issue debt and equity. It should be able to deploy this capital in creative arrangements, such as by blending it with foreign capital and lowering risk premiums with insurance and guarantees. It should draw on, not re-create, the Department of Energy’s expertise in assessing the risks and benefits of emerging technologies, such as advanced nuclear energy, hydrogen power, and carbon capture and storage. The Clean Energy Finance Authority could be managed by the U.S. Treasury Department, in light of the latter’s experience in risk underwriting and financial diligence, and given the mandate to coordinate closely across agencies.

With nimble, market-oriented financing capacities, the Clean Energy Finance Authority would be able to accelerate and initiate, not impede, financial transactions. Whereas the Marshall Plan was 90 percent financed with U.S. grants, a Clean Energy Marshall Plan could easily be the inverse, with less than ten percent of its expenditures in the form of grants and the rest of the capital being deployed as equity, debt, export credit, and other forms of financing. And whereas the Chinese Belt and Road model relies on government-dominated financing, an American approach would be market-based and therefore more efficient because it enables competition and encourages large investments of private capital.

The Clean Energy Finance Authority should be capitalized with a significant upfront commitment of money—enough to generate market momentum that tips the balance of clean energy investment toward the private sector; ultimately the private sector, not the public sector, will need to provide the majority of the financing the energy transition needs over the coming decades. If this new authority is set up and deployed properly, U.S. companies and innovators would gain more foreign demand, on favorably negotiated terms, and new market share. Foreign consumers, for their part, would gain access to new channels of cheap clean energy technology. For emerging-market countries and major emitters—such as Brazil, India, and Indonesia—the United States could act with both generosity and its own interests in mind.

THE DANGER OF DEPENDENCE

The United States should also establish a Clean Energy Resilience Authority, whose goal would be to create more resilient supply chains for the clean energy transition. To support burgeoning manufacturing production in developing countries, and to expand that of the United States, the world needs diversified supply chains that are not dominated by individual states and do not have exploitable chokepoints. Today, China controls 60 percent of the world’s rare-earth mining production and approximately 90 percent of its processing and refining capability.

The United States should lead a coalition of partners to build access to processed critical minerals such that the energy transition does not substitute dependence on foreign oil for dependence on Chinese critical minerals. Thankfully, the term “rare-earth minerals” is a misnomer: these elements are abundant and geographically dispersed. Eighty percent of the world’s lithium reserves, 66 percent of its nickel reserves, and 50 percent of its copper reserves are in democracies. Eighty percent of oil reserves, by contrast, are in OPEC countries, nearly all of which are autocracies.

In today’s energy market, the most important tool the United States wields is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a stockpile of oil created 50 years ago as a response to the 1973 oil crisis. In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine , in 2022, the U.S. government used this reserve to ensure adequate supply by selling 180 million barrels of oil. When prices fell, the administration began refilling the reserve, securing a profit for U.S. taxpayers of close to $600 million as of May 2024. This mechanism has reduced the volatility of oil prices while advancing U.S. strategic interests.

As part of the Clean Energy Marshall Plan, Washington must level the playing field through the use of trade tools.

The United States should create a strategic reserve capability for critical minerals, as well. A body similar to the U.S. Treasury’s Exchange Stabilization Fund, a reserve fund used to prevent fluctuations in the value of the U.S. dollar, but for critical minerals would enable the United States to stabilize the market for these resources. The Clean Energy Resilience Authority could offer various forms of financial insurance that would steady prices, protect consumers from price spikes, and generate stable revenue for producers during low-price periods. And it should have the ability to build up physical stockpiles of key minerals, such as graphite and cobalt, whether on U.S. soil or in allied territory.

Support for this type of reserve capability already exists. The bipartisan House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party recommended just such a body. The United States’ allies are also on board: in May, South Korea allocated an additional nearly $200 million to build up domestic lithium reserves. Indeed, the original Marshall Plan also recognized the need to improve access to strategically important materials, funding domestic stockpiles for goods such as industrial equipment and medical supplies.

With the Clean Energy Resilience Authority, the United States would be better able to craft multilateral agreements to diversify critical minerals processing. As part of that effort, it could organize a critical minerals club among leading producers and consumers, wherein members could offer and receive purchase commitments. Such an arrangement would give countries that produce and process minerals reliable access to the United States and other developed markets—assuming they meet high standards for sustainable and ethical mining practices. The outcome would be more minerals processed in a more diverse supply chain, sold into a more stable market.

TRADING PLACES

The Marshall Plan underscored the importance of using trade policy to advance U.S. interests: it required European countries to integrate their economies and to remove trade barriers as a means of expanding U.S. exports, promoting capitalism, and warding off communism. A Clean Energy Marshall Plan should help lead a coalition to elicit a more balanced global trading system.

Right now, China is the central actor in global supply chains for clean energy technologies. Facing a stalling domestic economy, China is pursuing a state-led strategy of investing in domestic manufacturing capacity rather than in greater domestic demand or a stronger social safety net. For some goods, such as electric vehicles, batteries, and solar panels, China explicitly aims to dominate global manufacturing. That strategy is fundamentally unsustainable for the global economy. For one thing, it creates acute supply chain vulnerabilities; because the world relies so heavily on China for processing rare-earth minerals, a natural disaster or geopolitical tensions could threaten the entire global supply. For another thing, the strategy erodes industrial capacity across the world, including in the United States. By flooding global markets with artificially cheap goods without a commensurate increase in imports, China forces the cost of its subsidies onto its trade partners—undercutting employment, innovation, and industrial capacity elsewhere. Indeed, this strategy even harms China’s own industrial sector and fails to address the root causes of its domestic economic challenges.

As part of the Clean Energy Marshall Plan, Washington must level the global playing field through the active yet measured use of trade tools such as tariffs. Doing nothing and being resigned to China’s statist approach is neither economically nor politically sustainable. And using blunt tools to effectuate what amounts to a unilateral retreat is dangerous. Former U.S. President Donald Trump ’s call to essentially end all imports from China within four years is a cynical fantasy playing on populist fears. In 2022, U.S. goods and services trade with China amounted to over $750 billion. It is not practicable to decouple from any major economy, let alone the United States’ third-largest trading partner. Global trade delivers important benefits, whereas unilateral, asymmetric escalation would leave the United States isolated and vulnerable.

The right approach is to harmonize more active trade policies with like-minded countries. Indeed, Brazil, Chile, India, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, and Vietnam, among others, are all investigating or imposing tariffs on Chinese dumping practices. China is now the object of twice as many retaliatory measures as it was four years ago. This growing pushback represents a chance for the United States to address the Chinese-driven global trade imbalance by crafting a global coalition to galvanize a coordinated response while creating more global trade in clean energy goods and services.

To accomplish this, the United States must use expanded, stronger, and smarter trade authorities. For example, Washington should build into its tariffs on imported goods an assessment of how much carbon was used to produce them. Tariffs should be determined by the emission intensity of the trading partner’s entire industry, rather than company by company, to avoid “resource reshuffling,” whereby countries try to dodge penalties by limiting their exports to only products manufactured with clean energy instead of reducing their emissions overall. These tariffs should be aimed at all countries, but given its current production practices, China would be hit the hardest.

This form of tariff regime could be coordinated with what other countries are doing on the same front. The effort should begin with the steel sector. Chinese-made steel is two to five times as carbon-intensive as U.S.-made steel and is being dumped in markets around the world. The United States has been working on an arrangement with the European Union to harmonize tariffs on steel and aluminum. But the EU need not be the United States’ first or only partner in this initiative. There is a global appetite to enact a common external tariff regime on China to respond to its overproduction and carbon-intensive practices. Washington should work to pull this group together through the G-7 and G-20.

There is also a domestic appetite for this approach, in both the U.S. Congress and the private sector. For example, Dow Chemical has advocated the use of carbon policies to favor environmentally responsible industries that make heavily traded goods. Several bipartisan bills now in Congress propose similar policies. The United States could develop an industrial competitiveness program for heavy industries, such as those producing cement, steel, and chemicals, that bolsters domestic industry and makes trade more fair by charging a carbon-based fee on both domestic industries and imports at the border. This program would incentivize domestic innovation and efficiency, and it would advantage environmentally responsible U.S. companies that compete with heavy-carbon-emitting foreign producers. The revenue from the fee could be rebated to the U.S. private sector by rewarding the cleanest domestic producers and investing in research and development.

Investing in the clean energy transition abroad will benefit businesses and workers at home.

A carbon-based tariff, or a carbon border adjustment, should further motivate climate action by exempting countries that are hitting their nationally determined goals under the 2016 Paris climate agreement or those that fall below certain income and emission thresholds. To complement the Clean Energy Finance Authority, the tariff could be lowered in exchange for foreign procurement of clean energy technologies or of clean products made in the United States. For many developing countries, the tariff would act as a powerful accelerant to their energy development plans.

This approach would allow the United States to transition from its current indiscriminate, broad-based tariff regime to a more comprehensive carbon-based system that more accurately targets Chinese overcapacity and trade imbalance concerns. And the United States should leave the door open to cooperating with China in this context, as well.

Policymakers will have to reimagine existing trade rules—and be willing to lead the World Trade Organization and other international institutions in thinking about how trade can accelerate the clean energy transition. The WTO’s objective was never just to promote free trade for free trade’s sake; its founding document includes a vision for sustainable development. The WTO must reform if it is to deliver on that vision, but in the meantime, the United States shouldn’t cling to old trade conventions when more targeted and effective approaches exist.

BANKING ON THE FUTURE

Finally, as the United States upgrades its tools of economic statecraft, it should also increase its expectations of the world’s multilateral development banks, especially the World Bank . Like its predecessor, the Clean Energy Marshall Plan would be temporary, designed to unlock a wave of innovation investment to address a global need. The multilateral development banks are a necessary complement to active U.S. leadership today, just as they were in the postwar era. But the banks need to deploy their capital with the urgency that the energy transition and economic development demand. Although there has been a welcome recent focus on this reform agenda—including by the Biden administration, the G-20, and even the banks themselves—progress has been tepid, and conventional proposals lack ambition and creativity. Incremental change is not enough.

Some avenues already exist to spur the proper level of ambition. For example, donor countries can increase the stakes for the banks by fostering competition among them to make tangible progress on reforms that increase lending for climate-related projects and leverage their investments more effectively. Washington can already provide capital in the form of guarantees to multilateral development banks; this authority could be expanded such that U.S. capital is allocated to these banks based on which ones deserve it most. This “play to get paid” structure would challenge the banks to come forward with legitimate plans to improve their lending practices for clean energy projects. And the guarantee structure offers a great bang for the buck: the World Bank can spend $6 for every $1 of guarantee provided.

The Green Climate Fund, the sole multilateral public financial institution devoted to addressing climate change, could follow this approach, too. Almost 15 years after it was founded, the GCF has disbursed only 20 percent of the funding it has received. To speed up its progress and increase its leverage, the GCF should allocate a portion of its funds to the multilateral development banks, building on its existing practice of lending to these institutions, based on a similar “play to get paid” principle. Instead of submitting individual project applications, the banks would submit proposals for leveraging hybrid capital to scale climate lending in support of the GCF’s mission, including the even split between those projects that prevent climate change and those that respond to its current impacts. In other words, the banks that can best attack the problem would receive flexible GCF capital to scale those efforts. Such a change would be merely one part of a multilateral system that maintains the momentum created by a Clean Energy Marshall Plan.

WIN-WIN-WIN

A Clean Energy Marshall Plan has the makings of a compelling pitch to U.S. domestic audiences: investing in the clean energy transition abroad will benefit businesses and workers at home. Evidence of that effect is already easy to find. The clean investment boom is turning novel technologies into market mainstays: emerging technologies such as hydrogen power and carbon capture now each receive more investment than wind. Billions of dollars are flowing to areas of the United States left behind by previous economic booms, bringing new jobs with them. But to further this momentum, the country needs to turn to foreign markets to boost demand for U.S. products.

The United States should seize the occasion to lead on its own terms. The Clean Energy Marshall Plan would be good for U.S. workers and businesses, unlocking billions of dollars of market opportunities; good for the United States’ developing country partners, by delivering low-cost decarbonization solutions; and good for the world order, by building more resilient supply chains and a more balanced and sustainable trading system.

Such a plan requires political focus and money, but it is not impossible. The United States can spend far less than it did on the Marshall Plan, thanks to the better financial tools available today and falling clean technology costs. And it could recycle the proceeds from a carbon-based border adjustment tariff into the finance and resilience authorities, thus setting up a system that pays for itself.

In this moment of domestic economic strength—stark against the backdrop of heightened competition, a fracturing world, and a raging climate crisis—the United States can do something generous for people across the globe in a way that benefits Americans. It should take that leap, not just because it is the morally right thing to do but also because it is the strategically necessary thing to do.

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• BRIAN DEESE is the Innovation Fellow at MIT. He served as Director of the White House National Economic Council from 2021 to 2023.
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Essay on Global Warming

• Updated on  
• Apr 27, 2024

Being able to write an essay is an integral part of mastering any language. Essays form an integral part of many academic and scholastic exams like the SAT, and UPSC amongst many others. It is a crucial evaluative part of English proficiency tests as well like IELTS, TOEFL, etc. Major essays are meant to emphasize public issues of concern that can have significant consequences on the world. To understand the concept of Global Warming and its causes and effects, we must first examine the many factors that influence the planet’s temperature and what this implies for the world’s future. Here’s an unbiased look at the essay on Global Warming and other essential related topics.

Short Essay on Global Warming and Climate Change?

Since the industrial and scientific revolutions, Earth’s resources have been gradually depleted. Furthermore, the start of the world’s population’s exponential expansion is particularly hard on the environment. Simply put, as the population’s need for consumption grows, so does the use of natural resources , as well as the waste generated by that consumption.

Climate change has been one of the most significant long-term consequences of this. Climate change is more than just the rise or fall of global temperatures; it also affects rain cycles, wind patterns, cyclone frequencies, sea levels, and other factors. It has an impact on all major life groupings on the planet.

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What is Global Warming?

Global warming is the unusually rapid increase in Earth’s average surface temperature over the past century, primarily due to the greenhouse gases released by people burning fossil fuels . The greenhouse gases consist of methane, nitrous oxide, ozone, carbon dioxide, water vapour, and chlorofluorocarbons. The weather prediction has been becoming more complex with every passing year, with seasons more indistinguishable, and the general temperatures hotter.

The number of hurricanes, cyclones, droughts, floods, etc., has risen steadily since the onset of the 21st century. The supervillain behind all these changes is Global Warming. The name is quite self-explanatory; it means the rise in the temperature of the Earth.

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What are the Causes of Global Warming?

According to recent studies, many scientists believe the following are the primary four causes of global warming:

• Deforestation 
• Greenhouse emissions
• Carbon emissions per capita

Extreme global warming is causing natural disasters , which can be seen all around us. One of the causes of global warming is the extreme release of greenhouse gases that become trapped on the earth’s surface, causing the temperature to rise. Similarly, volcanoes contribute to global warming by spewing excessive CO2 into the atmosphere.

The increase in population is one of the major causes of Global Warming. This increase in population also leads to increased air pollution . Automobiles emit a lot of CO2, which remains in the atmosphere. This increase in population is also causing deforestation, which contributes to global warming.

The earth’s surface emits energy into the atmosphere in the form of heat, keeping the balance with the incoming energy. Global warming depletes the ozone layer, bringing about the end of the world. There is a clear indication that increased global warming will result in the extinction of all life on Earth’s surface.

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Solutions for Global Warming

Of course, industries and multinational conglomerates emit more carbon than the average citizen. Nonetheless, activism and community effort are the only viable ways to slow the worsening effects of global warming. Furthermore, at the state or government level, world leaders must develop concrete plans and step-by-step programmes to ensure that no further harm is done to the environment in general.

Although we are almost too late to slow the rate of global warming, finding the right solution is critical. Everyone, from individuals to governments, must work together to find a solution to Global Warming. Some of the factors to consider are pollution control, population growth, and the use of natural resources.

One very important contribution you can make is to reduce your use of plastic. Plastic is the primary cause of global warming, and recycling it takes years. Another factor to consider is deforestation, which will aid in the control of global warming. More tree planting should be encouraged to green the environment. Certain rules should also govern industrialization. Building industries in green zones that affect plants and species should be prohibited.

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Effects of Global Warming

Global warming is a real problem that many people want to disprove to gain political advantage. However, as global citizens, we must ensure that only the truth is presented in the media.

This decade has seen a significant impact from global warming. The two most common phenomena observed are glacier retreat and arctic shrinkage. Glaciers are rapidly melting. These are clear manifestations of climate change.

Another significant effect of global warming is the rise in sea level. Flooding is occurring in low-lying areas as a result of sea-level rise. Many countries have experienced extreme weather conditions. Every year, we have unusually heavy rain, extreme heat and cold, wildfires, and other natural disasters.

Similarly, as global warming continues, marine life is being severely impacted. This is causing the extinction of marine species as well as other problems. Furthermore, changes are expected in coral reefs, which will face extinction in the coming years. These effects will intensify in the coming years, effectively halting species expansion. Furthermore, humans will eventually feel the negative effects of Global Warming.

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Sample Essays on Global Warming

Here are some sample essays on Global Warming:

Essay on Global Warming Paragraph in 100 – 150 words

Global Warming is caused by the increase of carbon dioxide levels in the earth’s atmosphere and is a result of human activities that have been causing harm to our environment for the past few centuries now. Global Warming is something that can’t be ignored and steps have to be taken to tackle the situation globally. The average temperature is constantly rising by 1.5 degrees Celsius over the last few years.

The best method to prevent future damage to the earth, cutting down more forests should be banned and Afforestation should be encouraged. Start by planting trees near your homes and offices, participate in events, and teach the importance of planting trees. It is impossible to undo the damage but it is possible to stop further harm.

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Essay on Global Warming in 250 Words

Over a long period, it is observed that the temperature of the earth is increasing. This affected wildlife, animals, humans, and every living organism on earth. Glaciers have been melting, and many countries have started water shortages, flooding, and erosion and all this is because of global warming. 

No one can be blamed for global warming except for humans. Human activities such as gases released from power plants, transportation, and deforestation have increased gases such as carbon dioxide, CFCs, and other pollutants in the earth’s atmosphere.                                              The main question is how can we control the current situation and build a better world for future generations. It starts with little steps by every individual. 

Start using cloth bags made from sustainable materials for all shopping purposes, instead of using high-watt lights use energy-efficient bulbs, switch off the electricity, don’t waste water, abolish deforestation and encourage planting more trees. Shift the use of energy from petroleum or other fossil fuels to wind and solar energy. Instead of throwing out the old clothes donate them to someone so that it is recycled. 

Donate old books, don’t waste paper.  Above all, spread awareness about global warming. Every little thing a person does towards saving the earth will contribute in big or small amounts. We must learn that 1% effort is better than no effort. Pledge to take care of Mother Nature and speak up about global warming.

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Essay on Global Warming in 500 Words

Global warming isn’t a prediction, it is happening! A person denying it or unaware of it is in the most simple terms complicit. Do we have another planet to live on? Unfortunately, we have been bestowed with this one planet only that can sustain life yet over the years we have turned a blind eye to the plight it is in. Global warming is not an abstract concept but a global phenomenon occurring ever so slowly even at this moment. Global Warming is a phenomenon that is occurring every minute resulting in a gradual increase in the Earth’s overall climate. Brought about by greenhouse gases that trap the solar radiation in the atmosphere, global warming can change the entire map of the earth, displacing areas, flooding many countries, and destroying multiple lifeforms. Extreme weather is a direct consequence of global warming but it is not an exhaustive consequence. There are virtually limitless effects of global warming which are all harmful to life on earth. The sea level is increasing by 0.12 inches per year worldwide. This is happening because of the melting of polar ice caps because of global warming. This has increased the frequency of floods in many lowland areas and has caused damage to coral reefs. The Arctic is one of the worst-hit areas affected by global warming. Air quality has been adversely affected and the acidity of the seawater has also increased causing severe damage to marine life forms. Severe natural disasters are brought about by global warming which has had dire effects on life and property. As long as mankind produces greenhouse gases, global warming will continue to accelerate. The consequences are felt at a much smaller scale which will increase to become drastic shortly. The power to save the day lies in the hands of humans, the need is to seize the day. Energy consumption should be reduced on an individual basis. Fuel-efficient cars and other electronics should be encouraged to reduce the wastage of energy sources. This will also improve air quality and reduce the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Global warming is an evil that can only be defeated when fought together. It is better late than never. If we all take steps today, we will have a much brighter future tomorrow. Global warming is the bane of our existence and various policies have come up worldwide to fight it but that is not enough. The actual difference is made when we work at an individual level to fight it. Understanding its import now is crucial before it becomes an irrevocable mistake. Exterminating global warming is of utmost importance and each one of us is as responsible for it as the next.  

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Essay on Global Warming UPSC

Always hear about global warming everywhere, but do we know what it is? The evil of the worst form, global warming is a phenomenon that can affect life more fatally. Global warming refers to the increase in the earth’s temperature as a result of various human activities. The planet is gradually getting hotter and threatening the existence of lifeforms on it. Despite being relentlessly studied and researched, global warming for the majority of the population remains an abstract concept of science. It is this concept that over the years has culminated in making global warming a stark reality and not a concept covered in books. Global warming is not caused by one sole reason that can be curbed. Multifarious factors cause global warming most of which are a part of an individual’s daily existence. Burning of fuels for cooking, in vehicles, and for other conventional uses, a large amount of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, and methane amongst many others is produced which accelerates global warming. Rampant deforestation also results in global warming as lesser green cover results in an increased presence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which is a greenhouse gas.  Finding a solution to global warming is of immediate importance. Global warming is a phenomenon that has to be fought unitedly. Planting more trees can be the first step that can be taken toward warding off the severe consequences of global warming. Increasing the green cover will result in regulating the carbon cycle. There should be a shift from using nonrenewable energy to renewable energy such as wind or solar energy which causes less pollution and thereby hinder the acceleration of global warming. Reducing energy needs at an individual level and not wasting energy in any form is the most important step to be taken against global warming. The warning bells are tolling to awaken us from the deep slumber of complacency we have slipped into. Humans can fight against nature and it is high time we acknowledged that. With all our scientific progress and technological inventions, fighting off the negative effects of global warming is implausible. We have to remember that we do not inherit the earth from our ancestors but borrow it from our future generations and the responsibility lies on our shoulders to bequeath them a healthy planet for life to exist. 

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Climate Change and Global Warming Essay

Global Warming and Climate Change are two sides of the same coin. Both are interrelated with each other and are two issues of major concern worldwide. Greenhouse gases released such as carbon dioxide, CFCs, and other pollutants in the earth’s atmosphere cause Global Warming which leads to climate change. Black holes have started to form in the ozone layer that protects the earth from harmful ultraviolet rays. 

Human activities have created climate change and global warming. Industrial waste and fumes are the major contributors to global warming. 

Another factor affecting is the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation and also one of the reasons for climate change.  Global warming has resulted in shrinking mountain glaciers in Antarctica, Greenland, and the Arctic and causing climate change. Switching from the use of fossil fuels to energy sources like wind and solar. 

When buying any electronic appliance buy the best quality with energy savings stars. Don’t waste water and encourage rainwater harvesting in your community. 

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Tips to Write an Essay

Writing an effective essay needs skills that few people possess and even fewer know how to implement. While writing an essay can be an assiduous task that can be unnerving at times, some key pointers can be inculcated to draft a successful essay. These involve focusing on the structure of the essay, planning it out well, and emphasizing crucial details.

Mentioned below are some pointers that can help you write better structure and more thoughtful essays that will get across to your readers:

• Prepare an outline for the essay to ensure continuity and relevance and no break in the structure of the essay
• Decide on a thesis statement that will form the basis of your essay. It will be the point of your essay and help readers understand your contention
• Follow the structure of an introduction, a detailed body followed by a conclusion so that the readers can comprehend the essay in a particular manner without any dissonance.
• Make your beginning catchy and include solutions in your conclusion to make the essay insightful and lucrative to read
• Reread before putting it out and add your flair to the essay to make it more personal and thereby unique and intriguing for readers  

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Ans. Both natural and man-made factors contribute to global warming. The natural one also contains methane gas, volcanic eruptions, and greenhouse gases. Deforestation, mining, livestock raising, burning fossil fuels, and other man-made causes are next.

Ans. The government and the general public can work together to stop global warming. Trees must be planted more often, and deforestation must be prohibited. Auto usage needs to be curbed, and recycling needs to be promoted.

Ans. Switching to renewable energy sources , adopting sustainable farming, transportation, and energy methods, and conserving water and other natural resources.

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Digvijay Singh

Having 2+ years of experience in educational content writing, withholding a Bachelor's in Physical Education and Sports Science and a strong interest in writing educational content for students enrolled in domestic and foreign study abroad programmes. I believe in offering a distinct viewpoint to the table, to help students deal with the complexities of both domestic and foreign educational systems. Through engaging storytelling and insightful analysis, I aim to inspire my readers to embark on their educational journeys, whether abroad or at home, and to make the most of every learning opportunity that comes their way.

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This was really a good essay on global warming… There has been used many unic words..and I really liked it!!!Seriously I had been looking for a essay about Global warming just like this…

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I want to learn how to write essay writing so I joined this page.This page is very useful for everyone.

Hi, we are glad that we could help you to write essays. We have a beginner’s guide to write essays ( https://leverageedu.com/blog/essay-writing/ ) and we think this might help you.

It is not good , to have global warming in our earth .So we all have to afforestation program on all the world.

thank you so much

Very educative , helpful and it is really going to strength my English knowledge to structure my essay in future

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Global warming is the increase in 𝓽𝓱𝓮 ᴀᴠᴇʀᴀɢᴇ ᴛᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴀᴛᴜʀᴇs ᴏғ ᴇᴀʀᴛʜ🌎 ᴀᴛᴍᴏsᴘʜᴇʀᴇ

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Guest Essay

What the Lobstermen of Maine Tell Us About the Election

By Scott Ellsworth

Mr. Ellsworth, a historian, traveled to Maine for this essay.

Mid-July is peak season on the central Maine coast. The blueberries — the small, low-bush kind long prized by the state’s jam makers and pie bakers — had started to appear in the farmers markets, along with the first of the tomatoes. Bright orange tiger lilies burst from front yards, while Queen Anne’s lace and goldenrod line the two-lane roads. The summer light dazzles, falling in soft waves upon the spruce and cedar, and brightening the paint on both midcentury saltboxes and grander Victorian homes. It’s no wonder that people want to come here.

Stonington is, without a doubt, one of the prettiest towns on the Maine coast. Over breakfast one morning at Stonecutters Kitchen, I asked Linda Nelson, the town’s economic and community development director, how many Hallmark movies had been filmed there.

“Not enough,” she replied.

Stonington also happens to be the largest lobster port in America. Dozens of fishing boats are anchored in the harbor, while lobsters caught in nearby Blue Hill, Jericho and Isle au Haut Bays are exported across the country and, more recently, across the globe. I was told by locals that not one of the beautiful wooden homes that form Stonington’s classic picture postcard view is owned by a fishing family, who now live elsewhere on Deer Isle or over the bridge on the mainland. From the perspective of a lobsterman, many of whom have deep Maine roots, the P.F.A.s — People From Away, as locals call them — are a presence to be tolerated. The lobster fishermen and the tourists and part-time residents coexist in two separate worlds, one that is changing beneath the surface.

In a significant political year, when a small group of voters in a few places will most likely shape the answers to pivotal questions about our government, how does a community living out climate change feel to its residents? This part of Maine is represented by a Democrat in Congress, but the district, Maine’s second, has voted for Donald Trump twice by decent margins; this is one of those places where every vote can matter. Here, the punishing demands of the present, how hard everyday work is, how important costs and prices are, make the pivotal nature of this time feel very distant from politics.

During much of the past two decades, record numbers of lobsters have been caught off the Maine coast, providing a steady living for scores of lobster fishermen and their families. But a host of recent pressures has been building up that may upend a way of life that, for some, stretches back for generations. Indeed, as far as climate change goes, Maine’s lobster fishing community may well be America’s own canary in the coal mine.

“Everything has changed. Everything is changing,” said Dana Black, age 50, who is a fourth-generation fisherman and lives with his wife and two daughters over the bridge in Brooksville. “That’s all I’ve done,” he said. Mr. Black got his first job, on a lobster boat, when he was 12. By the time he was in high school he had gotten a taste of what kind of money could sometimes be made on the water. He skipped school one Friday to work as a sternman on an offshore boat, hauling lobster traps. By the time he got back on dry land on Monday, he recalled, “I had made 2,700 bucks.” Like his father, grandfather and great-grandfather before him, Mr. Black had found his calling.

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Firm Adaptation to Climate Change

We survey the microeconomics literature that studies how firms in the developing world are adapting to extreme weather, local pollution, and natural disasters. Climate change increases the uncertainty that every firm must address as it decides where and how to produce and who to trade with. We study how expectations, market structure and firm heterogeneity determine investment in self-protection. A firm’s resilience also depends on government policies, market insurance access and infrastructure investments. We explore the strategic interactions between firms and governments that together determine firm risk exposure. We discuss benchmarks for measuring adaptation progress at the firm, industry and macroeconomic level.

The authors are immensely grateful to Arlan Brucal for his work in the early phases of this project. The authors also thank Yewon Choi for her research support and Robert Huang, Somik Lall, Denis Medvedev and Forhad Shilpi for their thoughtful comments and suggestions. Kahn thanks the USC Wrigley Institute for Environment and Sustainability for generous funding. The views expressed in this paper are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the World Bank, its Executive Directors, the countries they represent, or the National Bureau of Economic Research.

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The poisonous global politics of water

Polarisation makes it harder to adapt to climate change.

T HE WATER thieves come at night. They arrive in trucks, suck water out of irrigation canals and drive off. This infuriates Alejandro Meneses, who owns a big vegetable farm in Coquimbo, a parched province of Chile. In theory, his landholding comes with the right to pour 40 litres of river-water a second on his fields. But thanks to drought, exacerbated by theft, he can get just a tenth of that, which he must negotiate with his neighbours. If the price of food goes up because farmers like him cannot grow enough, “there will be a big social problem,” he says.

The world’s water troubles can be summed up in six words: “too little, too much, too dirty”, says Charlie Iceland of the World Resources Institute ( WRI ), a think-tank. Climate change will only aggravate the troubles. Already, roughly half of humanity lives under what the WRI calls “highly water-stressed conditions” for at least one month a year.

Adapting will require not only new technology but a new politics. Villages, regions and countries will need to collaborate to share scarce water and build flood defences. The needs of farmers, who use 70% of the world’s freshwater, must be balanced with those of the urbanites they feed, as well as industry. In short, a politics of trust, give-and-take and long-term planning is needed. Yet the spread of “them-and-us” demagoguery makes this harder. A global study by Jens Marquardt and Markus Lederer of the University of Darmstadt notes that populists stir up anger, sow distrust of science and dismiss climate policies as the agenda of liberal elites.

Around 97% of the water on Earth sits in the salty ocean; land-, lake- and river-bound life depends on the remaining 3%. Although the amount of water on the planet is immutable, the daedal workings that move it around are not. The water cycle is made up of a dizzying number of processes, many of them non-linear, which operate across various timescales and areas. All are, ultimately, driven by the energy of the sun, which makes seawater evaporate, plants transpire and, by disproportionally heating the tropics, powers ocean currents and weather systems.

Global warming alters the ways water behaves. It intensifies the water cycle, increasing the severity of both very wet events and very dry ones . Warmer air can hold more moisture, which also evaporates more readily up out of warmer oceans. More moisture in the atmosphere means more can fall back out as rain or snow. This increases the likelihood of heavier deluges in wet regions . That, in turn, means less potential precipitation is left for drier spots. “Thirsty” air there is more likely to suck moisture out of the soil, prolonging and worsening droughts.

The UN reckons that, between 2002 and 2021, flooding affected around 1.6bn people, killed nearly 100,000 and caused economic losses of over $830bn. Droughts, in the same period, affected 1.4bn, killed over 20,000 and cost $170bn. The World Bank estimates that by 2099, the global supply of freshwater per head will fall by 29% from what it was in 2000; and by a massive 67% in Africa, while rising 28% in Europe (see chart).

In Chile, “too little” is becoming a crisis, for which politics is nowhere close to finding a solution. It is the most water-stressed country in South America. “Santiago [the capital] is OK now but in ten years it might not be,” warns Jessica López, the public-works minister.

For centuries, Chileans who wanted water simply took it from streams and rivers, or sank wells to pump groundwater. But as parts of the country dry up, rules written in wetter times are increasingly out of date. Intense distrust between left and right—in a country that has seen massive protests in recent years—makes them hard to revise.

Conservative governments granted many landowners “water rights”, allowing them to pump a generous amount each day, for free and for ever. Today, the total volume of granted water rights far exceeds what can sustainably be extracted. So farmers like Mr Meneses have had to sit down with their local water association and agree on how much everyone can pump. Yet some people cheat, sinking illicit boreholes. Tension between big farmers, small farmers and villagers is high. “We’re surrounded by farms with illegal wells, and that’s why we have no water,” says Erica Díaz, a hard-up villager who relies on water trucks and recycles her washing-up water onto her vegetable patch.

Conservative Chilean landowners think of “water rights” as a natural part of property rights. But water is not like land. A house need not encroach upon a neighbour; but a well depletes groundwater for everyone. Granting a fixed volume of water rights in perpetuity is nuts.

Meanwhile, the Chilean left push the notion that water is a human right. A draft constitution , backed by the current government but rejected by voters in 2022, mentioned “water” 71 times, affirming everyone’s right to it, especially if they were poor or indigenous, but giving little clue as to how that right might be delivered.

The trickiness of water politics is on display at a meeting of small farmers in Punitaqui, a town in northern Chile. Everyone agrees water is too scarce. Some farmers complain big companies have taken an unfair share. Others complain of widespread criminality—including a water inspector getting death threats. An expert shows how to use ultrasound to detect leaks, which are common. Yet many farmers in the room admit they don’t even know where their local pipes are buried.

In one sense Chile has plenty of water: to the west is the Pacific Ocean. But getting a permit to build a desalination plant can take more than a decade. The problems are political more than technical. Just for permission to use a bit of shoreline for a plant, a firm must apply to the ministry of defence—taking three or four years. The archaeological-monuments council needs to be assured nothing of cultural interest is being damaged. That can take another three or four years. And then transporting water is a bureaucratic maelstrom.

Chile needs to think about water logically, says Ulrike Broschek of Fundación Chile, a think-tank. Desalination is useful, but unless powered by renewables it is bad for the climate. By one estimate, global emissions from desalination could match all of those from Britain by 2025.

In Chile, bigger, cheaper gains are to be made. Farms, which account for four-fifths of water use, could use drip irrigation and hydroponics more. If farmers paid directly for water, they would use it more efficiently. Cities, instead of having impermeable pavement everywhere, could use “rain gardens” to capture rain and recharge the groundwater below. And the rules need to be simpler: 56 public bodies regulate water, with no overall co-ordinator, Ms Broschek complains.

Ms López, at least, offers an encouragingly pragmatic view. A pending bill will speed up permits for desalination, she promises, and more water infrastructure will be built. More broadly, she argues that water “needs to have an appropriate price”.

Elsewhere, sensible water pricing is as rare as it is necessary. Even in places where it has been shown to work, it can be politically fraught. Take Australia, another dry country where farmers use more water than everyone else combined. Federal and state governments thrashed out an agreement in 2012 to conserve water in the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia’s biggest system of interconnecting rivers. It relied on an existing scheme allowing farmers to buy or sell water entitlements. The goal was to save 3,200 gigalitres (gl) by 2024, either by “buying back” entitlements from farmers or by investing in projects that could save equivalent amounts, such as more efficient irrigation systems.

Australia has conserved about 2,130gl of water, equivalent to over 20% of what was previously consumed. Meanwhile, farm output has risen. It helps greatly that the country is rich. The government has pumped A$13bn ($8.8bn) into water-saving. Systems for measuring water use are sophisticated. When Malcolm Holm, a dairy farmer, needs to irrigate his pastures, he orders water online. Sensors measure out the volumes. Locks are raised, and it trickles into his fields. The system sustains his 1,200 cattle.

Yet nearly everyone is unhappy. Environmentalists say the targets should be more ambitious. Farmers say they are too strict. No one is forced to sell their water to the government, but because many do, the system reduces the total amount available to trade for irrigation. This is one reason why water prices have risen in the past decade. That is the point: higher prices spur conservation. But they also threaten rural livelihoods. Protests have erupted in rural New South Wales. “Preschools are struggling to get children in. Footy clubs haven’t got enough players,” says Linda Fawns, a councillor in Deniliquin, a small town. Jamie Tasker, a local agricultural mechanic, claims the government is “scaremongering” about the environment and squeezing irrigation to shore up city votes.

Almost nine out of ten Australians live in cities, and politicians, certainly, do not want their taps to run dry. But priorities change as parties alternate in power. The (conservative) Liberal Party, which is more pro-farmer and reluctant to do much about climate change, stopped doing water buybacks. The Labor Party, in federal power since 2022, resumed them.

Allegations of water theft abound. Last year a farmer was fined a mere A$150,000 for illegally taking over A$1.1m-worth of groundwater. “Theft is a business model, because fines don’t fit the crime,” grumbles Robert McBride, who runs an outback sheep station.

The Murray-Darling plan comes up for review in 2026. As droughts grow worse, the government ought to buy back more water, thus raising water prices and driving the least water-efficient farms out of business. They won’t go quietly.

From conflict to compromise

If the politics of water is touchy in well-off, stable places like Australia and Chile, it is explosive in poorer countries. Climate change seems to be making the weather more erratic in many of them, for example, by magnifying the variability inherent in the El Niño-Southern Oscillation , a global driver of monsoons and their rains.

In April and May floods in Kenya were the worst in memory. Bridges, schools and railways were destroyed. Perhaps 300 people died. Following years of drought, the government was caught off-guard, says Kennedy Odede of SHOFCO , an NGO serving Kenya’s slums. “When it started raining, people were happy. Nobody was expecting there to be too much.”

The government should have been better informed. Persistent drought paves the way for flooding, since the soil hardens and the water has nowhere to go but sideways. Kenya’s populist president, William Ruto, ignored warnings last year of impending floods.

Benninah Nazau, a vegetable hawker in Mathare, a Nairobi slum, recalls rain pounding on her tin roof at 5pm on April 23rd. When she peered out, she saw tables and chairs swept along by the nearby river. By 1am the water was surging through her home. She grabbed her five children and took them to higher ground, unable to salvage any possessions. “It was life or death.” Neighbours were carried off in the deluge.

Political dysfunction makes cities less resilient. Rules barring the construction of homes dangerously close to the river—such as Ms Nazau’s, which was only six metres—are ignored. Landowners bribe officials to look the other way when they flout planning codes. Builders pave over wetlands.

Whereas scarcity has an obvious solution—higher prices—the problem of too much water does not. Flood defences must be built and people discouraged from living in the riskiest places. But where, and how? Kenya’s government is sponsoring tree-planting along Nairobi’s river banks, to help hold back future floods. A moratorium has been placed on new building permits in the city. Officials are evicting people from homes built 30 metres or less from the riverbanks and destroying the buildings. In the worst-affected part of Mathare, all that remains is rubble and a stench of sewage. Each household was offered 10,000 shillings ($77.60) compensation.

Many residents, however, are resisting. Some are still in shacks by the river, refusing to leave. Others want more compensation. Many distrust the government, widely seen as corrupt. Some Kenyans think politicians deliberately caused the flooding, to pave the way for the slum clearances that followed. Belief in such far-fetched conspiracy theories makes co-operation between state and citizens less likely.

Squabbles over water can turn violent. The Water, Peace and Security partnership, a global body, crunches data to predict water-related conflicts. Its latest update, in June, notes that herders and farmers across the Sahel are fighting over scarce water. Drought-related skirmishes are expected in South Africa, Madagascar and Mozambique, and floods in Iran and Afghanistan have displaced populations into areas where they may not be welcome.

Tensions between states are common, too. As rivers grow more erratic, negotiations between downstream countries and upstream ones may grow more fraught. Dry countries (such as China and the Gulf states) are buying up farmland in Africa and the Americas to secure future supplies of food. In effect, they are importing vast quantities of water in the form of wheat and soyabeans. This could become a political flashpoint.

Water wars between states are fortunately rare. But Egypt is furious about an Ethiopian dam that could disrupt its access to the Nile river, from which it gets nine-tenths of its water. Talks over how to share the water keep failing. Egyptian officials hint they might go to war. They may be bluffing, but no one can be sure.

To avoid water wars, countries need to use water more efficiently (Egypt wastes it copiously) and negotiate more amicably. Much work needs to be done in both areas. The world spends roughly 0.5% of GDP on water, the World Bank estimates, but 28% of allocated public funds go unspent, and a typical water utility has “efficiency losses” (leaks and theft) of around 16%. As for amicable haggling, three-fifths of the world’s 310 international river basins lack frameworks to govern disputes.

Another thing that makes water policy hard is that many people—such as those whose homes are too costly to defend from floods, or whose crops wither—will eventually have to move. Chilean vineyards are already shifting south. Outback towns will shrink. Inundated Africans and Asians will keep migrating to cities or abroad.

Rich countries may be able to help compensate those whose homes and fields are rendered worthless, but the process will be disruptive everywhere. Nonetheless, it should be manageable. The WRI estimates that solving the world’s water crises would cost 1% of GDP per year until 2030, and that every $1 invested in sensible ways to do so would yield $6.80 in benefits. However, getting the politics right will require calm, collaborative leadership, disproving the epigram attributed, perhaps erroneously, to Mark Twain: “Whisky’s for drinking; water’s for fighting.” ■

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Climate Change Essay

500+ words essay on climate change.

Climate change is a major global challenge today, and the world is becoming more vulnerable to this change. Climate change refers to the changes in Earth’s climate condition. It describes the changes in the atmosphere which have taken place over a period ranging from decades to millions of years. A recent report from the United Nations predicted that the average global temperature could increase by 6˚ Celsius at the end of the century. Climate change has an adverse effect on the environment and ecosystem. With the help of this essay, students will get to know the causes and effects of climate change and possible solutions. Also, they will be able to write essays on similar topics and can boost their writing skills.

What Causes Climate Change?

The Earth’s climate has always changed and evolved. Some of these changes have been due to natural causes such as volcanic eruptions, floods, forest fires etc., but quite a few of them are due to human activities. Human activities such as deforestation, burning fossil fuels, farming livestock etc., generate an enormous amount of greenhouse gases. This results in the greenhouse effect and global warming which are the major causes of climate change.

Effects of Climate Change

If the current situation of climate change continues in a similar manner, then it will impact all forms of life on the earth. The earth’s temperature will rise, the monsoon patterns will change, sea levels will rise, and storms, volcanic eruptions and natural disasters will occur frequently. The biological and ecological balance of the earth will get disturbed. The environment will get polluted and humans will not be able to get fresh air to breathe and fresh water to drink. Life on earth will come to an end.

Steps to be Taken to Reduce Climate Change

The Government of India has taken many measures to improve the dire situation of Climate Change. The Ministry of Environment and Forests is the nodal agency for climate change issues in India. It has initiated several climate-friendly measures, particularly in the area of renewable energy. India took several steps and policy initiatives to create awareness about climate change and help capacity building for adaptation measures. It has initiated a “Green India” programme under which various trees are planted to make the forest land more green and fertile.

We need to follow the path of sustainable development to effectively address the concerns of climate change. We need to minimise the use of fossil fuels, which is the major cause of global warming. We must adopt alternative sources of energy, such as hydropower, solar and wind energy to make a progressive transition to clean energy. Mahatma Gandhi said that “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not any man’s greed”. With this view, we must remodel our outlook and achieve the goal of sustainable development. By adopting clean technologies, equitable distribution of resources and addressing the issues of equity and justice, we can make our developmental process more harmonious with nature.

We hope students liked this essay on Climate Change and gathered useful information on this topic so that they can write essays in their own words. To get more study material related to the CBSE, ICSE, State Board and Competitive exams, keep visiting the BYJU’S website.

Frequently Asked Questions on climate change Essay

What are the reasons for climate change.

1. Deforestation 2. Excessive usage of fossil fuels 3. Water, Soil pollution 4. Plastic and other non-biodegradable waste 5. Wildlife and nature extinction

How can we save this climate change situation?

1. Avoid over usage of natural resources 2. Do not use or buy items made from animals 3. Avoid plastic usage and pollution

Are there any natural causes for climate change?

Yes, some of the natural causes for climate change are: 1. Solar variations 2. Volcanic eruption and tsunamis 3. Earth’s orbital changes

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