By David Suzuki
Fires scorching California, floods inundating Spain, heat killing and knocking monkeys from trees in Mexico, droughts scouring southern Africa, hurricanes ripping through the U.S. — it’s impossible to ignore. Scientists confirm 2024 was the hottest year on record for land and ocean — exceeding expectations. Average global temperature breached the 1.5 C threshold for the first time last year. Every year for the past 10 years has been the hottest!
“To put that in perspective, temperatures during the warm periods on Earth three million years ago — when sea levels were dozens of feet higher than today — were only around 3 C warmer than pre-industrial levels,” NASA climate scientist Gavin Schmidt said in the Guardian. “We are halfway to Pliocene-level warmth in just 150 years.”
When will people take it seriously?
We’re activating feedback loops and breaching tipping points, with extreme weather–related events increasing and ecosystems collapsing, yet we carry on as if everything’s fine. Sure, a lot of progress has been and is being made in cleaner, renewable energy and other solutions, but we’re not moving quickly enough — thanks mainly to the fossil fuel industry and its political and media lackeys.
Every minute we stall in getting away from gas, oil and coal locks more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, wreaking accelerating havoc for years, decades or centuries. The devastation will continue to worsen unless we free ourselves from the suicidal fossil fuel economy — hotter, drier conditions and strong winds fuelling massive wildfires, increased bouts of precipitation combined with denuded hills and lands triggering floods and landslides, water becoming scarce as glaciers melt and reservoirs dry up, migrants fleeing areas made inhospitable by heating temperatures, agriculture decimated by droughts and floods.
The climate crisis is also fuelling an affordability crisis, as extreme weather events, floods, fires, droughts, heat and pollution drive agricultural losses, increase health care costs, hamper supply chains and make property insurance prohibitively expensive or impossible to obtain in affected areas.
The most frustrating part is that solutions are available and improving every day. But the powerful fossil fuel industry and its related arms — including the auto industry — are holding us back. Corporate executives amass obscene wealth as conflict and war drive global profits to record levels.
We could have cleaner air, water and land, a stabler climate, more green spaces, better jobs and working conditions, greater equity and improved health and wellbeing if we were to stop being fooled into believing that putting profit above planet is good.
We need every tool, from market solutions such as carbon pricing (misleadingly called “carbon taxes”) to transformative shifts away from the consumer-capitalist regime that’s destroying Earth’s life-support systems.
Change is hard. And leaving it until the problem has become a crisis makes it harder. But not changing will make life far more difficult for far more of us, and for those who come after us. We still have time and opportunity to create a better world from this crisis, but it’s quickly running out.
As the New York Times reports, “If nations had started reducing emissions in 2005, they could have made gradual cuts to limit warming to 1.5 degrees,” while starting in 2015 with adoption of the Paris Agreement “would have required steeper cuts” and “Starting today would require cuts so drastic as to appear essentially impossible.”
We absolutely must use energy wisely and efficiently, rapidly shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy, protect and restore natural spaces and free ourselves from the wasteful consumerist economic systems that hold us hostage.
Change will take effort from everyone. We must stay informed, engaged and active. We must learn to look beyond industry propaganda to find the truth and share it with others. As climate scientist Peter Kalmus writes in the Guardian, “Let’s do everything we can think of to chip away at the social license that the billionaire class and the fossil fuel industry desperately cling to.”
We must urge politicians from all parties to take this crisis — and opportunity — seriously. So, get involved, have conversations, write letters, sign petitions, march in the streets, vote for good climate policies, spend time in nature — do everything you can to ensure a brighter future for everyone.
There’s no end to what we can accomplish if we work together!
David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation. Written with David Suzuki Foundation Senior Writer and Editor Ian Hanington.
Learn more at davidsuzuki.org.
REFERENCES:
Heat killing and knocking monkeys from trees:
Hottest year on record:
Climate scientist Gavin Schmidt said:
Including the auto industry:
New York Times reports:
Peter Kalmus writes:
