Why climate inaction is just as bad as climate change

climate change

Why climate inaction is just as bad as climate change

Have you ever thought, “What if I could turn back the hands of time to about 200+ years ago when the world hadn’t heard of carbon emissions“?

How about wondering if we had done something different, maybe things would have turned out differently? No? Yes? Well, back to the present.

The world is in the middle of a climate crisis. Carbon emission is two times higher than it was years ago and there are projections that it will get worse.

People are already experiencing the deadly and costly impact of climate change — extreme weather temperatures and other climate change-induced conditions.

Now, here’s the drill. If we delay acting on climate change, the target to reach net-zero emission by 2050 will be wishful thinking.

Climate inaction has been linked to the continued climate degradation because the ratio of people and countries who are actively trying to achieve lesser emissions to the ones who are doing nothing to mitigate the crisis is extremely unbalanced, with the latter taking the higher number.

Climate inaction is also associated with people who haven’t accepted that the climate is changing and as such, make no effort to play their part. The worst of the bunch are those who don’t feel it is up to them to take action.

Another reason for climate inaction is the common scenario whereby countries look at their individual costs and benefits of curbing emissions.

Countries consider that the benefits for them in extracting and burning fossil fuels are large and fall on them individually compared to when they are distributed across all countries and as a result, are smaller. Same for emissions.

When the countries carry out their cost-benefit analysis, they realize the implication based on their immediate loss and gain and this will lead to climate inaction.

It will then become a case of “Why should we take action when country XYZ that produces so many emissions is doing nothing”.

For countries to overcome climate inaction, they must take drastic measures because inaction has way more financial implications as it will lead to economic losses.

According to the Swiss Re report, even though the richest countries would be badly hit by the climate change crisis, the poorer countries would fare much worse. This means every country will suffer the consequences.

But there is hope. If countries can – through planning and executing climate change mitigation strategies – jointly limit the temperature rise, they would be doing generations yet unborn a favor by giving them a chance to live.

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