Climate change: how humans affect the climate

Climate change is progressing and this can largely be attributed to human activity in the last centuries. Industrialisation, intensive agriculture and the use of fossil fuels have led to the global temperature increasing steadily. Climate change is becoming a climate crisis. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution in the 19^th Century, the temperature has already increased by approximately one degree. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), further increases are unavoidable if quick and comprehensive climate protection measures are not implemented. As the climate changes, natural disasters such as droughts and hurricanes are becoming more frequent. These natural disasters have far-reaching consequences for humans and tend to have the greatest impact on the most vulnerable members of the population, who are already suffering from issues such as hunger and poverty. Their circumstances are further exacerbated by the climate crisis. According to the World Bank, 132 million people could be living in extreme poverty by 2030 as a result of climate change.

Malteser International helps the people who are most affected by the climate crisis, both with emergency relief and in the context of long-term projects. Furthermore, we accept our own responsibility as an organization to reduce emissions, advocate for climate justice and contribute actively to climate action by working on reducing our CO2 emissions and establishing ecologically sustainable humanitarian aid work.

Climate change refers to a fundamental change in the global climate, which takes place over a longer period of time, as opposed to weather. As well as temperature, there are other elements that play a role here, such as precipitation and factors such as ocean currents. These elements interact, which can cause extreme weather conditions and natural disasters. Whilst naturally occurring climate fluctuations can involve increasing and decreasing temperatures, this usually occurs over thousands of years so animals and plants have time to adapt to the changed conditions. 

The changes in the climate in recent centuries can only partly be attributed to natural fluctuations, which is why experts now talk of ‘man-made climate change’. Since weather recording began in the year 1880, the 20 warmest years were all in the last 22 years, which illustrates that the earth’s atmosphere is heating up more quickly than ever before.

The term climate change is a neutral way of describing changes in the climate. The causal relationship between human activity and the current climate change has been scientifically proven for many years now. As this climate change is progressing rapidly and has disastrous consequences for humanity, we now often speak of a climate crisis. Current results from the IPCC show that climate change can no longer be stopped, merely mitigated. The term climate catastrophe is used to describe the scenario that faces us if this is not successful.

In the last 30 years, the masses of ice at the North Pole have depleted by around half. Polar caps and glaciers melting is causing sea levels to rise and lessening the natural cooling effect that the ice has on the whole earth. Arctic permafrost melting poses the most significant risk, as it contains around 1.8 billion tons of carbon, which would be released as methane in the melting process and would have an effect many times stronger than CO2. This would massively accelerate the greenhouse effect. The permafrost melting is considered one of the so-called tipping points of climate change. If these tipping points are reached, thresholds will be crossed that would make the consequences inevitable, even if global warming could be reversed later.

The direct effects of climate change result in a number of indirect effects, which have a significant impact on people’s lives and are particularly devastating for vulnerable segments of the population or people who are in areas that are already threatened. Natural disasters impact the lives of millions and destroy basic necessities, which can have fatal consequences in impoverished areas if, for example, the financial resources to rebuild are not available or the harvest and water supplies have already been used in previous crises.

Prolonged dry periods and decreased soil quality negatively impact agricultural yields and livestock and therefore food security. For example, forest fires, droughts, hurricanes and floods often destroy whole harvests, which can lead to famines. Water scarcity and shortages are also a result of increasingly frequent and intense extreme weather conditions. Decreasing biodiversity can also be attributed to climate change, as the environment changes too quickly for flora and fauna to be able to adapt.

As a result of alarming forecasts from the scientific community, the Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015, comprising of extensive political measures with the primary goal of limiting the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees and achieving climate neutrality by 2050 at the latest. Likewise in 2015, in the context of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the United Nations agreed on seventeen sustainability development goals (SDGs), with the objectives of a better and more humane future and the preservation of natural resources. These goals should be implemented by all nations by the year 2030. With SDG 13 in particular, the global community has committed to concrete measures against climate change and for climate protection. This includes improving living conditions in the countries of the Global South to facilitate the implementation of climate goals there.

Achieving these goals and mitigating the climate crisis will not only require political change, but also the involvement of businesses and civil society. Successfully protecting the climate and controlling global warming will only be possible through a combination of universal and individual measures.