July and August are the least ideal time for you to be anywhere above the equator. In Japan, the temperature can reach up to 38 degrees Celsius daily and the humidity makes it SO uncomfortable.
The heat I’m experiencing at the time of writing reminds me that July 2023 is reported as the world’s hottest month ever recorded on Earth. Climate change is a huge factor in it and if nothing significant is done, next year the record will very likely be broken again. The question is, can we actually stop (or at least slow down) climate change?
The answer to that is, well, yes and no.
Yes, we can technically stop it. 196 countries across the world agreed on the Paris Agreement in 2016 to do all efforts to reduce carbon emissions so that the global temperature increase can be kept well under 2 degrees Celsius of the pre-industrial level. Each country has its own policies as to how to do this so the government and their respective experts know that there are things they (we) can do. (Whether or not they actually do it is another question)
To see where we can cut the emissions from, let’s look into the share of carbon emissions by sector in 2016 below.
This leads me to the no answer, and it concerns both us as individuals and all of us as humanity.
We can see from the chart that some sectors that emit carbon are related to the stuff that we consume daily. Road transport, for example, contributed 11.9%. But have we started to shift to public transit yet? Have the governments provided quality public transit options?
Or even, have we started to walk more to get to places that are within reach? Or are we still riding our motorcycle to the convenience store that’s 300 meters away?
When it comes to power generation (electricity), we know very well that steam-powered power plant is harmful as it uses coal and/or diesel engines. Yet, if a country is to build a nuclear power plant, people and NGOs will be opposing the plan due to safety concerns, much like in Japan. Other alternatives including geothermal power have been and will be resisted as the hotspots are mainly in a reserved/protected forest. We’re a hypocrite, aren’t we?
One last item I want us to take a closer look at is agriculture, especially the livestock which contributes 5.8%. The meat that we consume every day apparently is a pretty big carbon emitter. When I attended the Climate Change in Asia Pacific course as a part of my Master’s Program, we had one dedicated class talking about agriculture’s effect on climate change.
In that very class, I asked, “Well if we know that meat consumption is pretty harmful to the environment, why can’t we just ban all the meat in the world?”
The professor’s response was….in a very rational way makes me kind of pessimistic about the world. “We can’t just prohibit people from eating meat. Do you know that in South America, it’s the culture to hang out on the weekend with the family and finish 5kgs of meat? That’s for one family and it is big. But can we ask them to stop living their culture?”, he said
That is very rational in the sense that I can’t imagine prohibiting people from Padang to make Rendang or ask the Javanese to stop making and eating Rawon. It’s part of their life. All our lives.
Everything just leads me back to the very question of…can we actually stop climate change?
Or even
Do we actually want to stop climate change?
Let’s let that sink in.
