Who cares if we caused climate change?

*Australian January mean temperature anomaly (Australian Bureau of Meteorology) with overlaid Standardized Melt Index for the Greenland Ice Sheet (National Snow and Ice Data Center)

My son was born in northern Australia but he’s lived almost half of his young life in Greenland. He sees changes all around him – both in the Arctic environment he is immersed in and in the tropics he left behind. And, being highly cognizant of climate change discussions, he worries, aged ten, for the children he already hopes to have one day.

For the past couple of months, his Australian home has been burning. The wild fire season is unlike anything experienced in recorded history. In what is not yet the hottest part of the year, the fires – visible from space – have already burned an area about the size of Austria, larger than Scotland, larger than Maine. In a recent brief reprieve from the staggering mid forty degree Celsius temperatures and strong winds, a fire chief noted to the press that firefighters would take the opportunity to regroup and try to bring some of the 15,000 kilometres of fire front under control. Fifteen thousand kilometres is almost the distance from London to Sydney.

These conditions are the culmination – thus far – of dramatic changes that have been recorded over at least the past fifty years. Recent heat waves in Australia have blasted through all previous records, spreading devastating mid forty degree temperatures across vast areas of the country. Last Saturday, Sydney hit a record high of 48.9 degrees Celsius, just two weeks after the continent of Australia reached a record average temperature of 41.9 degrees Celsius.

Meanwhile, in 2019, Greenland saw record surface melt extent of the ice cap, net ice loss well above the long term average, and the second lowest recorded minimum sea ice extent.

Most of this isn’t news to anyone. And most people accept, either through science or through their personal experience, that the climate is changing. The world is getting warmer. But still, arguments rage over whether this is our fault? The scientists say yes. But plenty of us still say no, that climate change is just a natural phenomenon that has happened before and is happening again now.

But who cares?

We agree it’s happening. And I think we can agree that we can do something about it.

Think of this simple experiment. Two plastic soft drink bottles sit on a warm, sunny window sill. One is half-filled with water. The other is half-filled with a carbonated drink. Through  a hole in each of the tightly closed lids is a thermometer measuring the temperature of the air inside each bottle. After a few hours in the sun, the bottle with the carbonated drink will have a hotter ‘atmosphere’ than the one with the water. The reason is that a carbon-dioxide rich atmosphere retains more heat. This is simple science that anyone can try for themselves. And we know that carbon emissions to our atmosphere have dramatically increased over the last century, and continue to increase.

So regardless of whether climate change started through a natural process unrelated to human influence or whether we precipitated these changes, we could nevertheless do one thing that we can all agree will help to make our lives, and the lives of our children, far less difficult than they would otherwise be – reduce carbon emissions.