Everyone
must have heard about Climate Change, but does everyone already understand what
does Climate Change really means? To simplify your understanding, just imagine
the earth and atmosphere as a green house. When sun radiates its heat to a
green house, some of those heat will be directly reflected to the sky, while
some of them will stay inside the green house. The greenhouse gases (CO2,
CH4, N2O, etc.) work just like this green house, which
causing not all of the heat directly reflected to the sky, however some of them
are absorbed by greenhouse gases and causing those heat to be trapped inside
the green house, or in this case trapped inside the earth’s atmosphere.
What
makes it interesting to discuss about this topic is a tweet from The President
of one of the country with the largest economy in the world who said that “Global
warming is an expensive hoax! It’s a money making industry”. It’s true that
fighting climate change is an expensive effort, and this also could affects the
economy growth rate of a country, but we also have to compare that with the possibilities
of economic loss that might have to be spent due to Climate Change. As an
example, China, the country with the fastest economy growth in the world with
6% annual growth rate, is also the country with the largest amount of CO2
emission in the world, where 12 Giga Tons of CO2 are emitted from this
one country alone!
Figure 1 Country with the highest carbon dioxide
emissions in the world
(Source: Seymour & Busch, 2016)
In
order to prove the truth of Climate Change, let’s take a closer look using
scientific approach. Since the beginning of industrial revolution in the 19th
century, the concentration of world’s atmospheric carbon dioxide is always
rising and rising each year. The differences of global temperature between 1884
and 2018 are also showing an average increase. The world is facing the hottest
temperature ever recorded in the human history in 2016, and it is predicted
that the global temperature will keep increasing if the concentration of world’s
atmospheric carbon dioxide is not properly controlled.
Figure 2 Global carbon dioxide concentration over time
(Source: climate.nasa.gov, 2019)
Figure 3 Global temperature since 1880 to 2018
(Source: climate.nasa.gov, 2019)
From
these evidences, we can clearly see the correlation between the increasing of
atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration with the increasing of global
temperature. So it can be concluded that climate change is absolutely not a
hoax, it’s even possibly catastrophic for human kind! Then why do we have to be
bothered to think about this problem? There are some effects of Climate Change
that we might had already experienced or might happen near in the future. Some
of these effects that affect Indonesia the most are drought and heat wave,
change in precipitation patterns, and increasing sea level. As an example, for
the increasing sea level problem, the global sea level is always rising with
the average rate of change about 3.3 millimeters per year. From the data below
we can see that in just 25 years, the sea level has already increased by 94 mm.
Just imagine if this trend keeps continue, there will be a lot of habituated
island in Indonesia that will sink and causing a lot of people have to migrate
from one island to another. Don’t forget the number of human population in
Indonesia that always increasing over time will also causing another problem
such as land availability.
Figure 4 Global sea level since 1993 to 2018
(Source: climate.nasa.gov)
So
now, that we already understand the fact about Climate Change, let’s start to strengthen
our will on fighting the Climate Change, even with just a single baby step. Just
imagine fighting Climate Change as a race between human being and nature. It’s
not just an ordinary race, but it’s a race that we have to win in order to
survive. If human being wins the race, the prize is being able to live in this
planet for a much longer time. In the other hand, if human being lost this
race, the consequence is either human extinction or massive interplanetary
migration. In order to win this race, there is only one way to do it, Collaboration.
When every human in this planet has understood the truth about Climate Change
and takes a small action to solve this big problem, Climate Change will not be
a big threat anymore for us. There is only one planet and one home for human
being, and that is our beloved planet earth.
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References:
IANS.
(2019): India loses fastest growing economy tag, Q4 GDP grew 5.8%. New Delhi:
IANS
Soedomo,
Mustikahadi. (2001): Pencemaran Udara. Bandung: Penerbit ITB
https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/ [Accessed 29/8/2019]
https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ [Accessed 29/8/2019]
https://climate.nasa.gov/causes/ [Accessed 29/8/2019]
https://climate.nasa.gov/effects/ [Accessed 29/8/2019]
https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/sea-level/ [Accessed 29/8/2019]
https://wri-indonesia.org/en/resources/charts-graphs/if-tropical-deforestation-were-country-it-would-rank-third-co2e-emissions [Accessed 29/8/2019]
