The fastest rise in CO2 in the last 50,000 years
The state of our planet’s health is alarming. And the pathogen is called Homo sapiens.
This is how it happened: today’s increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide is ten times faster than at any other time in the last 50,000 years, as researchers have discovered from a detailed chemical analysis of old Antarctic ice.
These findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provide important new insights into abrupt climate change in the Earth’s past and offer new insights into the possible impacts of today’s climate change.
‘Studying the past tells us that today is different. The rate of CO2 change today is truly unprecedented,’ said Kathleen Wendt, an assistant professor in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University and lead author of the study. ’Our research has identified the fastest rates of natural CO2 increase in the past, and today’s rate, caused largely by human emissions, is ten times higher.’ That is why climate change will transform many of today’s holiday paradises into tomorrow’s deserts if we do not stop it. In Germany, for example, the Lake Constance region.
More efforts required
The United Nations is therefore calling for significantly more efforts to combat climate change. According to UNEP, the focus is primarily on the major industrialised countries, which are the biggest contributors to the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and thus to global warming. ‘Essentially, we need global mobilisation on an unprecedented scale and pace,’ says UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen. The greatest responsibility lies with the rich industrialised countries such as the USA, Europe and Japan, but also the newly rich industrialised countries such as China, the Arab oil-producing countries, Japan and South Korea, and soon probably India as well.
Africa’s population is four times as large as that of the United States. But all of Africa only accounts for 16.9 per cent of the US’s emissions. That is why the poor countries most affected by climate change, i.e. the global South, demanded that the rich polluters, i.e. the global North, pay 1,300 billion US dollars per year at the 29th World Climate Summit in Azerbaijan in 2024 to finance the solar energy revolution and the damage caused by the climate catastrophe, which can no longer be prevented.
At the last climate summit in Azerbaijan, the rich countries pledged just 300 billion per year. That is less than a quarter of what is needed. So far, the rich have paid the poor less than $100 billion per year to compensate for the destruction of their homeland. We should be less concerned about migration in this country and think more about the causes, such as our CO2 emissions. We have a moral obligation to do so. The world needs more climate justice. Only then can the solar world revolution succeed. Only then can the solar age begin. Only then can the sun win.
The old climate-destroying energies are still subsidised by the industrialised countries to the tune of more than 1,000 billion US dollars every year. So it is not a lack of money, but justice that is needed.
The Israeli bestselling author Yuval Noah Harari writes: ‘We are on the verge of ecological collapse, caused by the misuse of our power. We are developing new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) that have the potential to escape our control and enslave or even destroy us. But instead of uniting to confront these threats, international tensions are increasing, global cooperation is becoming more and more difficult, countries are stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, and a new world war no longer seems inconceivable. If we are so wise (homo sapiens! F.A.), why are we so self-destructive?’ (Yuval Noah Harari: Nexus –page 9)
