Local solutions for global climate change

Climate change may be described as a shift from norm of weather patterns over a region or the whole earth characterised by variations in the statistical characteristics of weather elements.

Theoretically, Man and climate have synchronously evolved over time, each affecting the other so that human civilisations and the climate of the earth have changed several times.

About 2.6 million years ago, for instance, the earth experienced its first Ice Age and about 133,000 BC, tropical Africa had its first extreme drought.

The current warm climate of Earth — known as global warming — started about 1800 AD, the same time as the Industrial Age, and its effects have been escalating.

These include sudden weather swings, extreme droughts, excessive rainfall, superabundant floods, rise in the level of the sea, melting of glaciers and the break-out of strange plant, animal and human diseases.

GLOBAL PROBLEM

Global warming is a global problem with many natural causes. There is little Man can do about its natural causes; we can only annul its anthropogenic causes by working towards an apex of ‘climate stabilisation’.

Families can exercise proper waste disposal, plant flowers and trees in their compounds, construct live hedges and reduce their atmospheric aerosol contribution through clean energy use and maintenance of machines.

Communities should establish wood lots, ensure proper waste disposal, rid swamps and river valleys of rotting vegetable matter, curb deforestation, protect forests, plant cover crops and ensure each member does their bit to constraint the emission of greenhouse gases.

ACT ON TREATIES

Nationally, climate-related treaties must be acted upon. These include the 2016 Paris Agreement, whose long-term goal is to keep the global average temperature below 20 degrees Celcius above pre-industrial levels and to limit the increase to 1.50°C.

Nations must, therefore, conserve their forests, rack up forest restoration, orchestrate enthusiastic afforestation, ostracise charlatans who derail climate change management and implement stringent waste management policies, especially for towns, more so in Africa.

They should also ensure that their industries exercise purification of waste gases before sending them up tall stacks into the atmosphere. Some of the industrial waste gases, like water vapour and carbon dioxide, can be harvested or recycled.

GLOBAL ACTION

More investment should be directed at development, distribution and use of clean energy and citizens goaded towards the use of public transportation as opposed to self-driven vehicles. Infrastructure for faster public transportation should be put in place alongside cycling lanes to inspire use of bicycles.

When all that snowballs to global action, global warming will be squashed and humanity will not experience Nick Bostrom’s last leg of existential risks — the ‘Big Bang’, where humanity is expected to live itself into oblivion.

Dr Kipkiror, an environmental consultant and lead expert in environmental/social impact assessment, is a lecturer at the School of Arts and Social Sciences, the University of Kabianga. [email protected].