When will you start believing in climate change?

Even though the percentage of people who believe in climate change is significantly higher than that of those who don´t, it´s challenging to pull together in this direction. According to Pex Research Center´s survey led back in April 2020, two-thirds of American adults say that the government is not doing enough to reduce the impacts of global climate change. Another survey shows the median percentage of respondents from 26 countries around the world. Around 68% reckon climate change as a major threat and 20% of people asked consider it a minor threat.

This number sounds promising to start a change. However, we firstly all need to realize that the health of our planet outweighs the money. Some people have already gone far in this cognition, some are on their way, but there are still some that are not capable to digress from the seek for carrier success and they obstruct the science to propagate sustainable development. The major problem in this disunite is the fact that some of the most powerful men on the planet are trying to deny the changes and convince people that every warning is a hoax. Most of us have a role model, doesn´t matter if it´s a parent, model, or politician, our opinions are often influenced based on their demeanor. If someone drums subjective beliefs into your vision, is it easy to decline and revise them? No, because that would cause us troubles and incomprehension in our social circles. If you are determined to hold by your conviction and you have valid arguments that come from your head, it is going to be hard to convince you otherwise, but still, the reading of the impacts supported by evidence and their potentially enormous seriousness could dawn on you.

So if not others, what will make you start to believe that climate change is a major issue that should be in favor of basically everything else? In other words, what has to happen so that everybody takes action?

• COASTAL FLOODING

Have you already heard about Tuvalu? It´s an island country located in Oceania. Rising sea level, which is caused mainly by glaciers melting, is indisputably endangering this nation´s future to the point where there´s been created a highly concrete evacuation plan. At this moment, scientists predict that with continuous sea-rise and coastal erosion, Tuvalu could be inhabitable in the next 50 years.

And not only Tuvalu´s situation is alarming. Since 1961, when glacier´s life cycles began to be studied, sea level rose on average by 3,6 mm. Metropolises located on the ocean´s coast such as Miami, Venice, or Tokio are at the risk of being flooded by the year 2100.

• MIGRATION

In the last years, 20 million people a year are forced to leave their homes because of climate change, and therefore the unbearable living conditions. In general, people coming from poorer countries are at least four times more likely to be displaced due to extreme weather than people in richer countries. Soon, these population movements are going to be chaotic everywhere, even in the most prosperous parts of the world.

The effects of global warming don´t spread evenly and the dismal reality is that the people living in poverty are the most vulnarable and therefore the hardest hit by climate change despite being emissionwise the least responsible for our crisis.

• EXTREME WEATHER CONDITIONS

All the countries in the southern hemisphere are already struggling with either significant declines in precipitation or dealing with massive wildfires. You have most certainly heard about the fires in Australia or the USA because these countries are wealthy enough to be able to inform a take action against the destruction, for now. For instance, the Democratic Republic of Congo, located in central Africa, is approximately 3,6 times smaller than Brazil. In 2019 Brazil registered a loss of around 3 million acres of tropical rainforest, while in DCR, the fire devastated up to 1,2 million acres of forests.

Other natural disasters have already intervened in lives all around the world as well. Severe hurricanes, cyclones, and droughts do not choose who to threaten. And someone could say: “but this has been happening for decades.” It is undoubtedly the truth, however never in such quantities. Human´s impact on the planet´s behavior has never been as obvious as it is today and it would be a naive illusion if we thought that it won´t get worse when the most powerful continue to seal our fate by caring about fortune.