It’s true that the climate has changed before many times during the earth’s history based on the contents of the ice cores that were drilled from the deep ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland. However, as Figure 1 shows – the pace of the increase and the rise in level in CO2 concentration and temperature have been dramatic (Dlugolecki and Lafled, 2005) (NOAA, 2020). The impact of the increase in temperature is being felt in melting glaciers and polar ice caps, extreme weather events and rise in sea levels. A Boston Consulting Group (BCG) survey of 3,000 people in eight countries, found that 70% of the people are now more aware (than pre-COVID-19) that human activity threatens the climate (Waddell and Beal, 2020).
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“Everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” A quip by Charles Dudley Warner, a contemporary of Mark Twain perhaps captures the (lack thereof) action on the environmental crisis. The extreme weather events, rising sea levels, more frequent and stronger storms are further exacerbating the social, economic and environmental stress on the most vulnerable communities of the world. So, what can be done to turn around this situation?