What does our planet have to show in the 10-year challenge?

THE 10 YEAR CHALLENGE

The social media is trending with yet another challenge these days and if you don’t know about it yet, you’re probably hibernating. People are sharing pictures of how they looked 10 years back versus how they look now. While it’s been mostly about positive changes like how their skin is more glowy and how they have gained more muscles than before, few people are also using this trend to talk about bigger issues and start a discourse around them.

Sites like Reddit and Instagram have exploded with posts calling for greater public awareness about the effects of climate change. While the original challenge is meant to provide a visual representation of the way someone has matured or changed, the climate-change versions convey a more serious message.

Let us have a look at the climatic changes that have happened over the last few years.

Temperature

Recent data shows that there’ll be almost no summer sea ice cover left in the Arctic in the next few decades. The effects won’t just be felt by the habitats and species such that rely upon this area — they’ll be dramatic in the entire northern hemisphere.

The Antarctic ice sheet is the largest single mass of ice on earth, accounting for around 90% of all fresh water on the earth’s surface and spanning almost 14 million sq km. This ice plays a vitally important role in influencing the world’s climate, reflecting back the sun’s energy and helping to regulate global temperatures. Parts of the West Antarctic Peninsula are among the fastest-warming places on earth. Even small-scale melting is likely to have significant effects on global sea level rise.

Oceans

Oceans are vital ‘carbon sinks’, meaning that they absorb huge amounts of carbon dioxide, preventing it from reaching the upper atmosphere. Increased water temperatures and higher carbon dioxide concentrations than normal, which make oceans more acidic, are already having an impact on oceans.

Oceans are already experiencing large-scale changes at warming of 1°C, with critical thresholds expected to be reached at 1.5°C and above.

Coral reefs are projected to decline by a further 70–90% at 1.5°C. A warming of 2°C virtually all coral reefs will be lost. It’s not only a tragedy for wildlife: around half a billion people rely on fish from coral reefs as their main source of protein.

Freshwater

Climate change is having serious impacts on the world’s water systems through more flooding and droughts. Warmer air can hold a higher water content, which makes rainfall patterns more extreme.

Rivers and lakes supply drinking water for people and animals and are a vital resource for farming and industry. Freshwater environments around the world are already under excessive pressure from drainage, dredging, damming, pollution, extraction, silting and invasive species. Climate change only exacerbates the problem and makes this worse. Extremes of drought and flooding will become more common, causing displacement and conflict.

In mountainous regions, melting glaciers are impacting on freshwater ecosystems. Himalayan glaciers feed great Asian rivers such as the Yangtze, Yellow, Ganges, Mekong, and Indus. Over a billion people rely on these glaciers for drinking water, sanitation, agriculture, and hydroelectric power.

Wildlife

Polar Bear

Polar Bears ambush seals from the edge of ice sheets so they are reliant on Arctic sea ice to hunt prey and raise their young. When the ice melts Polar bears must swim much further to find food and some drown before they find it.

If sea ice continues to melt earlier and form later each year the bears struggle to find food at a critical time of the year and reduce their chances of breeding and surviving.

Black Rhino

In 2009 Kenya suffered severe droughts. Farmers lost 80% of their cattle and native wildlife, including the Black Rhino, were severely affected.

There was an increase in poaching of rhinos for horn as local people struggled to survive. Droughts like this could become more widespread and common with the onset of climate change…

Amphibians

Amphibians include frogs and toads, salamanders and newts and the strange worm-like caecilians but are sadly the most endangered of all vertebrates.

In addition to pollution and loss of habitat, the spread of chytrid fungus is a major threat to amphibians worldwide.

Amphibians are sensitive to changes in their environment so are likely to be affected by changes in rainfall and temperature associated with climate change.

Those who will be most affected by the impact of climate change are often those least responsible for it. Oxfam estimates that the poorest half of the global population is responsible for 10% of global emissions, while the richest 10% of humanity is responsible for 51%.

Climate change will shape the 21st century regardless of whether climate targets are met, either through mitigation or adaptation to a world characterized by violent climate disruption.

As understanding of the implications of climate change grows, the pressure on governments and institutions to act is rising, along with accountability or comeuppance, including uprisings, for any failure to do so. These pressures — from civil society, regulators, investors, and legislators — are fundamentally reshaping the context in which countries and companies operate. Any forward-planning business has to start preparing for inevitable disruption, or else risk losing the societal license to operate. Targets should, therefore, be informed by what’s required to decarbonize rapidly, over what’s achievable.

Climate leadership is already being defined in terms of tackling direct emissions and more by efforts to be actively net positive and restorative.

Climate change will also require widespread adaptation of key services and infrastructure. The most expensive adaptation measures involve modifying infrastructure and improving coastal and flood protection. Costs will not necessarily be highest where vulnerability is greatest, but in regions with lots of infrastructures that need to be climate-proofed.

The situation is alarming but it seems we are going to wake up only after a major disaster strikes. We need to start taking small steps and not depend on the government completely. We need to get over these social media trends and trend things which are important for mankind.