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    Runaway Planet: How Global Warming is Already Changing the Earth
    Runaway Planet: How Global Warming is Already Changing the Earth
    Runaway Planet: How Global Warming is Already Changing the Earth
    Ebook51 pages30 minutes

    Runaway Planet: How Global Warming is Already Changing the Earth

    By The Washington Post

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    About this ebook

    Saving the world won't happen on the silver screen. In our fragile ecosystem, climate change is swiftly becoming the defining issue of how to prepare—and protect—the earth for the future.

    The climate change debate raged on in America in 2015, but the facts and the science now show irrefutably that our world is rapidly changing, and that irreparable damage has already begun. From rising sea levels to the spread of disease-carrying insects, from disappearing glaciers to the hottest temperatures ever recorded, climate change as a direct result of human beings’ actions affects everyone, and for many it is a matter of life or death.

    But progress is being made—with an historic United Nations meeting in Paris, with pledges by over one hundred countries to reduce emissions, with simple awareness. While many changes cannot be undone, great strides can still be made to stabilize regions most likely to be affected by climate change over the course of future generations.

    The Washington Post tackles this issue in vivid detail, profiling those who are at the forefront of the climate change debate—and those who are in the field, promoting the causes and doing the science that both warns and advocates for a safer tomorrow, for the earth and all its inhabitants.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDiversion Books
    Release dateDec 8, 2015
    ISBN9781682302798
    Runaway Planet: How Global Warming is Already Changing the Earth
    Author

    The Washington Post

    The Washington Post has built an unparalleled reputation in its coverage of American politics and related topics. The paper’s circulation, prominence, and influence continue to grow.

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      Book preview

      Runaway Planet - The Washington Post

      Introduction

      2015 is sure to be remembered as a historic year – and, likely, a turning point – in the climate change debate.

      A dramatic El Nino event means 2015 is virtually assured to be the hottest year on record. It's also the year that Pope Francis reframed the narrative and made the climate issue about protecting the poor and vulnerable. And the U.S. finally launched a policy to curb greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector, in the form of the Clean Power Plan.

      Most of all, though, it's the year when the world at last mobilized to take action on climate change at a historic United Nations meeting in Paris, France. With well over 100 pledges by individual countries to cut their emissions, the eventalready has consolidated more climate action than occurred at the ill-starred 2009 Copenhagen climate conference.

      So many signs of action, and so many reasons for it – but as this book shows, the problem is far from fixed, and major changes are already upon us. Countries are now racing against time and very simple physics, and, at least on a few fronts, it's a race they’re losing.

      Glaciers around the world are in rapid retreat – both smaller, mountain glaciers based on land and much larger glaciers, sometimes rooted deep below sea level, in key parts of Greenland and Antarctica. This represents nothing less than the early stages of what scientists might call a deglaciation – a planetary shift into a world featuring less ice on land or above sea level, which means much more water in the oceans and, thus, higher seas.

      Meanwhile, as temperatures creep upward, major changes to biological systems are also underway. After all, temperatures are a crucial influence on the underlying chemistry of life itself.

      Not every change is immediate and dramatic. Some are subtle or even nearly invisible – such as the spread of insects that carry tropical diseases into more northern latitudes. But that, too, is already happening.

      So where does it end? The world's negotiators are now trying to land the plane and hoping there is still some runway left. But it doesn't help that this is our first flight.

      The widely cited temperature target of holding warming to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels – previously considered to be a safe threshold for climate change, though recently many doubts have been raised about this – is not yet within reach. Currently pledged emissions cuts are insufficient to get there. And as these pages show, even with about 1 degree Celsius of temperature rise so far above the temperatures

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