Climate change is currently the most significant problem that humanity must find solutions for. But what is climate change exactly, and how does our way of life relate to it? In this article, we will address these questions and explain why we humans are responsible and why climate change poses a threat to our existence.

The Atmosphere and the Greenhouse Effect

The reason humans can live on Earth is our atmosphere. When sunlight reaches the Earth, many rays are directly reflected back into space by the atmosphere. This happens when they hit bright surfaces (e.g., snow).

When hitting dark surfaces such as water or forests, heat energy is released and then reflected back. Incidentally, this is also the reason why we feel warmer when wearing dark clothing in the summer.

This energy now also enters the atmosphere and is bound by greenhouse gases, being released only after some time (many years). The result: the Earth does not cool down immediately. This process is also known as the greenhouse effect.

Picture: Jaymantri, Pexels

If there were no greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, we humans could not survive because the average temperature would be around -18 degrees Celsius. It’s important to note that the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is less than one percent. The rest consists of about 99 percent oxygen and nitrogen.

The most important greenhouse gases are carbon dioxide (CO₂), water vapor, methane (CH₄₎, ozone (O₃), nitrous oxide (N₂O), and chlorofluorocarbons. The latter are exclusively caused by humans and were, among other things, used in refrigerators before their use was banned.

The Onset of Anthropogenic Climate Change

For billions of years, this system was stable. Since the Industrial Revolution (1760 to 1840), the industrialization of societies and the combustion of coal on a large industrial scale began.

From 1870, people also started using crude oil, which was refined for further industrial use. Nowadays, it forms the basis for fossil fuels like gasoline or diesel. The combustion of coal and gasoline led to the slow, unnatural growth of the concentration of resulting CO₂ in our atmosphere. This process is referred to in technical terms as “anthropogenic climate change.”

This way of life continued to prevail over the years until today. Humanity began to fly, more and more cars hit the roads, and the world population continued to grow, requiring more energy. A major driver for this is globalization, which enables more and more people to access the mentioned technologies and lifestyles.

The result: More and more greenhouse gases are released through anthropogenic, unnatural processes and accumulate in the atmosphere. There, they store heat energy and inevitably raise the average temperature on our planet.

Which Sectors and Industries Are Responsible for Most Greenhouse Gas Emissions?

In Germany, primarily six sectors are responsible for greenhouse gas emissions. The energy industry leads with around 30 percent of the total share, followed by industry and industrial processes such as steel or concrete production (23 percent), the transport sector (20 percent), the building sector (15 percent), agriculture (8 percent), and waste and other sectors (4 percent).

Globally, the energy industry accounts for about 37 percent, industrial processes for 21 percent, followed by the transportation and transport sector (20 percent), the building sector with 9 percent, and all other sectors with 12 percent.

It is clear in both cases that the transition to renewable energy and the electrification of transport are the most significant levers for combating climate change.

The Effects of Anthropogenic Climate Change

Many people living in temperate climate zones wonder where exactly the problem lies. “It gets a little warmer in the summer, which is great and not particularly dramatic.” While this may be true for some at the moment, the warming of our planet is becoming more of a problem for many others.

Firstly, rising temperatures lead to the melting of polar glaciers. This, in turn, raises sea levels, resulting in coastal floods. In the coming years, large cities such as New York could be affected by this.

Furthermore, extreme weather effects intensify, and drastic outliers become more extreme. This includes extreme rainfall, which caused a flood catastrophe and devastation in the German Ahr Valley in 2021. Additionally, there are increasingly prolonged periods of drought in the summer.

As a result, due to lower yields (due to too much or too little water), food becomes more expensive, and people living in already hot regions on Earth lose their livelihood. Livestock farming and agriculture are partly made impossible by the changed climate. In general, the locations where food is still grown shift dramatically, leading to a future shortage of food.

Moreover, the warming of the Earth negatively affects our health. Especially in large cities, where smog usually forms, it becomes more extreme. Since smog contains ozone that enters the atmosphere, ozone as a greenhouse gas leads to further warming, creating a cycle through which more smog is formed, as its formation accelerates at higher temperatures. Respiratory diseases will thus significantly increase.

Measures to Slow Down Climate Change

Stopping climate change altogether is not possible because the already emitted greenhouse gases are in the atmosphere and will persist there for years. However, we can limit the impact on our planet by radically reducing emissions in the most critical sectors.

The fact is that generating no emissions overnight is only theoretically possible, as it takes time. The good news, however, is that we already have the necessary technology and “just” need to use it consistently.

In particular, the use of renewable energy, emission-free vehicles, and building materials in the construction sector will play a key role. Another technology being developed is “carbon capturing,” which is intended to extract additional CO₂ from the air. However, it is still in its early stages of development. Consequently, the most important starting points are to address the problem of climate change with the available technologies with the greatest possible dynamism.

Interested in learning more about carbon capturing? Then continue reading here.