Climate Change: Gaia's Cry

On August 9, the group of scientists linked to the UN who make up the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) published its latest and devastating report on the climate on our planet, a document full of resounding messages:”Is humanity responsible for the increase in extreme events”,”there have been changes that will be irreversible for centuries or millennia”,”The concentration of CO₂ In the atmosphere it is the highest in the last 2 million years”. The Secretary-General of the United Nations himself ruled:”This report is code red for the world”. The messages that Gaia sends us are made up of very slow cadentious words, written with almost geological graphs and, although she always gives us enough notice to warn us, unfortunately we don't want to understand them. Climate change is a sad and undeniable reality that we cannot ignore.

The ability of human beings to influence Earth's climate began to change one night in mid-autumn in the Scottish town of Greenock. The young man who appears absorbed in J.E. Lauder's famous oil painting is none other than James Watt, one of the most brilliant minds of the 18th century. The precocious Scottish engineer has been obsessed with studying steam, temperature, fluid pressure and condensation since he was 16 years old. He doesn't know it yet, but the definitive model he is finalizing on the steam engine will give way to the Industrial Revolution, a crucial stage in human history that will suddenly transform the productive model, moving from an agricultural and rural economy to a mechanized and industrial one, forever changing the lives of human beings.

The day James Watt patented his steam engine (1769) the concentration of CO₂ in the Earth's atmosphere it was 280 parts per million (ppm), a figure that had remained unchanged for millennia. From that moment on, the curtains of the temple were torn. Human beings would go from walking on foot or traveling in wagons moved by draft animals, to traveling thousands of kilometers on railways or steamboats. The exploitation of fossil fuels for boilers, accompanied by a significant expansion of wealth, population and urban centers, would transform natural landscapes and would have a great impact on natural systems. For the sake of progress and industrialization millions of tons of CO₂, waste gas produced during combustion, were continuously discharged into the atmosphere. Today, 250 years after Waat's invention, the average concentration of CO₂ The gas mixture that envelops the Earth is 419 ppm, a sudden increase that has generated changes in climate unprecedented in human history.

This has a clear consequence: the increase in the global average temperature is already 1.1 degrees compared to pre-industrial levels; and the rate of global warming is such that there are no precedents for a similar process in at least the last 2,000 years, the IPCC report notes.

On the other hand, the scientists in the study also agree that the increase in extreme weather events is positively related to climate change, such as the exceptional snowfall of storm Filomena in January, the tremendous heat wave at the end of June in Canada, the floods in central Europe or in China in July or the recent forest fires associated with heat in the Mediterranean basin.

The science is undeniable, and the cost of inaction and responsibility continues to rise. According to the report itself, one of the most worrying aspects will be the melting of the polar ice caps, especially the North Pole. Its function is essential to cool the oceans and regulate the planet's temperature, making it the great 'air conditioner on Earth'. With the simulations published in the report, it is possible that the masses of sea ice will have disappeared in the next 60 years, a time shorter than the lifespan of a human being. It will be a perverse spiral, with a higher global temperature, the lower the amount of ice, the lower the cooling of the ocean masses and, therefore, the more temperatures will rise.

Climate change means a decrease in rainfall by at least 30%, the increase, magnitude and frequency of forest fires, the loss of vegetation cover and the increase in erosion will be responsible for a significant desertification of fertile soil, a fact that will be accompanied by a drastic decline in biodiversity on a global scale. Luis Reyes, in his January 2016 article, warned that “the price of water will be more expensive than oil”.

Faced with this scenario of uncertainty, we have only one option left. Having discarded Stephen Hawkins' idea of searching for a Planet B capable of harboring human life beyond the Solar System, climate changes are happening at an increasingly rapid pace and scientific evidence pushes governments and global society as a whole to accelerate the pace of transformation of our development model and our economic system to face the great threat posed by climate change. We must not lose hope. The immediate step is to dispute the meaning of the civilizational change that we are experiencing, to reduce unnecessary consumption, to change private vehicles for public transport, cars for bicycles or a pleasant walk on foot, to recycle waste, to be cared for with water and energy consumption in the home, visions, to incorporate organic products into our diet and reduce the consumption of meat, to return from time to time to the village of our grandmothers and learn how they lived then, to believe in science and alternative practices, to flee from the model of consumerism predator that destroys cultures and wildlife and involves us in every fight to face this very serious ecological threat; take care of the seeds that germinate from the local level to weave national, regional and universal solidarity... As the ancient Misak indigenous people said, recover the land and the memory so as to never lose HOPE.