More frequent and severe weather:
Higher temperatures are worsening many types of disasters, including storms, heatwaves, floods, and droughts. A warmer climate creates an atmosphere that can collect, retain, and drop more water, changing weather patterns in such a way that wet areas become wetter and dry areas drier. “Extreme weather events are costing more and more,” says Aliya Haq, deputy director of NRDC’s Clean Power Plan initiative. “The number of billion-dollar weather disasters is expected to rise.”
It is therefore evident that global warming is an event that continues to wreak havoc to our environment, wildlife and humanity at large. We need to take the following steps to overcome this menace.
1) Price carbon emissions
By adding a cost to emitting greenhouse gases, you create an incentive to produce less of them and switch to alternatives.
2) Subsidize clean energy, and end subsidies for dirty energy
Renewable energy sources like wind and solar power have already become dramatically more affordable. In the United States, renewables are cost-competitive with fossil fuels in some markets. In Europe, new unsubsidized renewable energy projects are coming online.
3) Close coal plants, and cut off the fossil fuel supply in other ways
Some countries are already taking steps to shut off fossil fuel power. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has assembled a panel to figure out when the country can close all of its coal plants. The United Kingdom, meanwhile, has pledged to end its coal use by 2025.
4) Electrify everything and get more efficient
Another way to use our resources more efficiently is to electrify everything: oil heaters, diesel trucks, gas stoves. That way, as our sources of electricity get cleaner, they pay climate dividends throughout the rest of the electrified economy. And products like electric cars are far more energy-efficient than their gasoline-powered counterparts.
5) Invest in innovation
Perhaps the best tools to fight climate change haven’t been invented yet — a battery that can store gobs of energy for months, a solar panel that’s twice as efficient, a crop that makes biofuels cheaper than petroleum, or something even better, beyond our imaginations.
6) End production and sales of cars, trucks, and buses that run on fossil fuels
7) Require “zero deforestation” supply chains
Halting deforestation can’t be done from afar; it requires working closely with local communities who live in and rely on forests. But governments and corporations can also be pressured to buy commodities only from forest regions certified as “deforestation-free.”
Norway, for instance, now has a “zero deforestation policy,” where it has committed to ensuring “that public procurements do not contribute to deforestation of the rainforest.” Hundreds of companies have made zero-deforestation commitments, too, but we still have a long way to go before they’re airtight and working.
8) Discourage meat and dairy consumption, encourage plant-based diets
On of the main ways in which the livestock sector contributes to global warming is through deforestation caused by expansion of pasture land and arable land used to grow feedcrops. Overall, animal agriculture is responsible for about 9% of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions globally (UN FAO).
Animal agriculture is also a significant source of other greenhouse gases. For example, ruminant animals like cattle produce methane, which is a greenhouse gas about 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide. The livestock sector is responsible for about 37% of human-caused methane emissions, and about 65% of human nitrous oxide emissions (mainly from manure), globally (UN FAO).
Beef is a bigger problem than other sources of meat
Producing beef requires significantly more resources (e.g. land, fertilizer, and water) than other sources of meat. As ruminant animals, cattle also produce methane that other sources (e.g. pigs and chickens) don’t.
Eschel et al. 2014 estimated that producing beef requires 28 times more land, 6 times more fertilizer and 11 times more water than producing pork or chicken. As a result, the study estimated that producing beef releases 4 times more greenhouse gases than a calorie-equivalent amount of pork, and 5 times as much as an equivalent amount of poultry.
Eating vegetables produces lower greenhouse gas emissions yet. For example, potatoes, rice, and broccoli produce approximately 3–5 times lower emissions than an equivalent mass of poultry and pork (Environmental Working Group 2011). The reason is simple – it’s more efficient to grow a crop and eat it than to grow a crop, feed it to an animal as it builds up muscle mass, then eat the animal.
9) Remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere
Every scenario outlined by the IPCC report counts on pulling carbon dioxide out of the air. However, many of the technologies needed to do this are in their infancy.