When discussing the topic of climate change, several points can be made. One being that we are losing on average 1.2 trillion tons of ice yearly. To put that into perspective, if you stacked $100 bills totaling to $1 trillion on top of each other, the stack would span 631 miles high. This problem is caused by carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions raising temperatures, dating back to the Industrial Revolution. Even if we, as a society, were to curb emissions in coming generations, over a third of the world’s remaining glaciers would have melted by the year 2100. If global net emissions were entirely ceased, the warming that we’ve caused would gradually reverse itself. This brings us to the Climate Clock, five physical clocks existing in: Berlin, New York, Seoul, Rome, and Glasgow, in addition to the digital clock on their website. This clock was constructed to remind its viewers of the remaining time to solve the climate change crisis, before the damage is irreversible, down to the second. If you are interested in looking at the digital Climate Clock, you can visit this website: https://climateclock.world/clocks.
Considering that this past decade has been the warmest, temperature wise, on record should cause people to come to the realization that global warming is in fact a real issue, affecting everybody, especially coming generations. In addition, the melting of the ice glaciers leads to a separate issue, rising sea levels. This, in turn, causes an increase in coastal erosion and elevates storm surge, considering that warming air and ocean temperatures create more frequent and intense coastal storms such as hurricanes and typhoons. The most recent hurricane was Hurricane Milton, the ninth hurricane of the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season, being classified as a category five at one point. With wind speeds reaching 180 mph in only 36 hours, Hurricane Milton was among the fastest intensifications on record. The storm took the lives of 74 individuals and caused roughly $25.5 billion in damage.
We can still sacrifice parts of our routines to help add time to the climate clock. One way is to conserve water. This can be done, for example, by maximizing the space available in your dishwasher and laundry machines, and running full loads of each. Another is simply reducing plastic waste. This can be done easily through an applied effort: bringing reusable shopping bags to the store, and reusable water bottles, ditching single use plastic that takes up considerable amounts of space in our landfills.
Climate change is happening now, and is largely due to human activities, so we’re all responsible for slowing its pace and reducing its impacts. We are living on this planet now as if we have another one to go to.
