Demetrios Karis

Human civilization will not collapse from the direct effects of climate change, but rather from the secondary effects of crop failures, infectious diseases, and armed conflict. The root cause of the climate crisis is the Earth’s energy imbalance: more energy is arriving at the Earth from the sun than is being radiated back out into space.  This is occurring because we have been cutting down forests and burning fossil fuels for the last 150 years at a furious rate, leading to a greenhouse effect and the consequent warming of the Earth’s land, oceans, and atmosphere. There is now general agreement that continuing to burn fossil fuels will lead to catastrophic consequences for human civilization as well as thousands of other species. We know how to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and transition to other sources of power, but we are not doing this at a rate that will prevent catastrophe. The problems at this point are not scientific or technical but rather political, which is why individuals should focus on changing policies at the national and international level rather than focusing on reducing their individual carbon footprint. For meaningful change to occur there needs to be mass mobilizations for climate action, and one critical initial prerequisite is an honest assessment of the current situation, plus predictions about what we can realistically expect in the near future. The goal here is to provide that information.