“Saving Humanity: The Nexus of Developed Nations, Climate Crisis, and the Battle Against Deadly Emissions”
Developed vs Developing Countries:
A developed country is the one having high per capita income and effective rate of industrialization. The developing is entirely the opposite, having low per capita income and slow rate of industrialization. For an example, we can have USA as developed country and Pakistan as developing one with a semi industrial economy.
An alarming issue:
The global warming and climate change have always been an alarming and concerning issue all over the world. Intense climate related disasters like floods, droughts, heat waves and storms have been on the rise worldwide. These natural disasters have a strong connection with climate change. Let’s have a look at the graph which shows drastic increase in natural disasters starting from 1900–2019.
The Culprits and the race for “Economic Superpower”:
Changes in climate conditions, especially the warming of global temperatures increases the likelihood of weather-related natural disasters. Now the question arises here why global warming is increasing at a very high rate? How and why developed countries are the culprits?
The countries all over the world are striving hard to become the economic superpower. The key to become superpower is by strengthening the economy and in order to flourish your economy, industries are the core solution. Other sectors involved are:
1) Agriculture
2) Transportation
3) Construction
Developed countries like USA, China et cetera all are fully focused on the above sectors to keep them on the list of economic superpowers. All these sectors contribute to increase the global temperature of the environment, which eventually results in climate change. The global temperature increases because of greenhouse gas emission. Greenhouse gases are by-products of igniting fossil fuels for economic activities. Note that all the above mentioned sectors involve use of automobiles, use of electricity et cetera.
The deadly gas emissions:
Electricity accounts for approximately 28% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. The transportation accounts for approximately 27% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. In USA Industry accounts for (24% of 2020 greenhouse gas emissions), commercial and residential (13% of 2020 greenhouse gas emissions) and agriculture (11% of 2020 greenhouse gas emissions). Leading cause of greenhouse gas such as carbon dioxide is because of vehicles used. In USA (17 million vehicles were sold in 2018), which is an alarming number.
Back in the times, and still the developed countries are installing industries in developing countries. In such way, they are growing their economies and not letting the greenhouse gases to emit in their region. That’s a smart way of getting off the culprits list.
People are dying because of climate change since 2000, over 1 million people worldwide have died from natural disasters. With the increasing number of industries, vehicles, electric devices et cetera it will be a great disaster not only for the developed countries but especially for the developing one’s which are already in great trouble.
Save humanity:
The whole world needs to take this climate issue serious, as millions are dying and will keep on dying if timely action will not be taken. Sustainable development goals are basically the global goals also a universal call to protect the planet and save the precious lives. These goals are made for the betterment of the society and to save the humanity from the deadly climate change and global warming issue. In short, SDGs are the greatest chance to save our future generation.
To deal with the climate change United Nation arranged the UN Climate Change Conference in which signed an international treaty on climate change which is called “The Paris Agreement”. It was accepted by 196 parties on 12, December 2015. The goal is to limit the global warming well below the 2º, preferably to 1.5º Celsius as compared to pre-industrial levels. Paris Agreement gives a chance to the developing countries to take the lead and provide the financial assistance to the countries that are under developed.
As an individual we need to play our role too. Use as less electricity as possible, do not turn on unnecessary fans & lights. By using engineering techniques, automate lights and fans at commercial level to reduce the unnecessary use of electricity. On your way to office try to use local transportation instead of using your own vehicle, so that less CO2 gets emitted in the environment. Reduce, reuse and recycle and plant as much trees as possible to have a safe and healthy environment.
