2024’s events are a clear reflection of the climate change effects: the conditions have been much worse than ever before. Climate change impacts the environment of the planet including the biosphere and human health and economy everywhere. These challenges are important for all sectors of society and everyone needs to work towards resolving them immediately.
Another change in weather associated with climate change is the record catalog numbers of extreme weather events. Destructive storms have become stronger and more frequent with hurricane-like storms, heat waves and floods causing devastating effects in communities. These events do not only lead to loss of life and distribution of property but also over burden the emergency services as well as long term economic losses.
Alarming levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are also contributing to global warming that is causing the melting of the ice caps and glaciers that ends up in an increase in the sea levels. Developing nations or underdeveloped countries and small island states are at high risk of experiencing submergence and sea level rise. This situation endangers millions people and requires expensive measures of adaptation to the changed environment including construction of flood barriers and moving of population to other areas.
Another danger of increased ecological and biodiversity loss is also involved. This inability of certain species to change over time in response to abrupt changes in the environment has led to habitat destruction and the emergence of various species of extinct organisms. This decreasing in the biodiversity makes it harder for the ecosystem to support these services such as pollination and carbon sequestration.
Climate change too, has an impact on human health. This is because higher temperatures aid the growth and development of disease vectors that maintain the spread of vector-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue fever. This is because heat stress and poor air quality give rise to problems of the respiratory and cardiovascular systems.
However, even a brief overview of the effects of global warming represents an enormous challenge, as it affects every natural process on the planet. There is an urgent need to implement remedial measures to reverse the consequences of these trends and especially for future generations. I suggest that we should scale down or eliminate on the production of greenhouse gases through using environmentally friendly methods and support for strong and healthy systems that will help us in maintaining stability in the planet.