Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Climate Crisis: How to Stop Global Warming and Create a Better and Cleaner World
    The Climate Crisis: How to Stop Global Warming and Create a Better and Cleaner World
    The Climate Crisis: How to Stop Global Warming and Create a Better and Cleaner World
    Ebook144 pages1 hour

    The Climate Crisis: How to Stop Global Warming and Create a Better and Cleaner World

    By Dieter Schelling

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    The Climate Crisis lays out the ABCs of the causes of climate change: highlighting what it could mean for you and what you can do about it. People from all walks of life and ages, schools, and other learning institutions will benefit from reading it.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDieter Schelling
    Release dateDec 14, 2020
    ISBN9781393365754
    The Climate Crisis: How to Stop Global Warming and Create a Better and Cleaner World

    Related to The Climate Crisis

    Related ebooks

    Economics For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      A Hot Mess

      Sep 17, 2019

      A Hot Mess
      3 min read

    • Article

      Earth Day 2023 Special Edition

      Apr 17, 2023

      Earth Day, April 22, has been marked globally for over 50 years. Born initially out of a desire by activists in the US to make environmental awareness a political issue, it has grown to become a key date worldwide. Such is its importance that it was

      5 min read

    • Article

      A New Narrative

      Apr 16, 2021

      A New Narrative
      3 min read

    • Article

      A New Narrative

      Apr 16, 2021

      A New Narrative
      3 min read

    • Article

      Photography For The Future

      Nov 2, 2021

      Photography For The Future
      7 min read

    • Article

      Future-Proof the PLANET

      Mar 8, 2022

      Future-Proof the PLANET
      6 min read

    • Article

      CLIMATE CHANGE An ‘Inconvenient’ Lie?

      May 20, 2022

      Many Christians are asking Creation Ministries International (CMI) to comment on global warming (‘climate change’). Until now we have avoided the issue because we don’t think of it as a core creation-Gospel issue. Also, no matter what view we take, s

      5 min read

    • Article

      World Environment Day: What Reasons Do We Have To Stay Hopeful About Our Planet’s Future?

      Jun 9, 2021

      Each day we are confronted with alarming news about the state of our planet. In the last week alone, the UN warned of mounting threats to the world’s soils, new research found that warming temperatures are starving the planet’s lakes of oxygen, and a

      7 min read

    • Article

      Everything We Do Now Counts

      Dec 6, 2023

      Everything We Do Now Counts
      6 min read

    • Article

      Apocalypse Just Now

      Mar 16, 2020

      Apocalypse Just Now
      3 min read

    • Article

      World Environment Day: What Action Can I Take To Tackle The Climate Crisis?

      Jun 9, 2021

      The climate crisis is the biggest existential challenge modern humans have ever faced, and judging by our progress so far we’re not coping with the threat of annihilation very well. Ahead of the G7 summit in Cornwall, it bears repeating that those se

      9 min read

    • Article

      Raising Africa’s Voice

      Oct 29, 2021

      Raising Africa’s Voice
      9 min read

    • Article

      Raising Africa’s Voice

      Oct 30, 2021

      Raising Africa’s Voice
      9 min read

    • Article

      In A World Of Boiling Frogs

      Sep 1, 2021

      Drop a frog in boiling water and it will jump out. Put a frog in water, slowly bring it to a boil and it will stay until it’s dead and cooked. This is the “boiling frog syndrome”. It’s on full display on planet Earth as I type. Us – the “frogs” – hav

      2 min read

    • Article

      THE CLIMATE CRISIS: “We Will Be Judged On Our Actions”

      Sep 10, 2021

      Leading British climber and instructor James McHaffie has campaigned to raise awareness of climate change, including naming new routes in the Dinorwic slate quarries after Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion. “I’ve been concerned about climate ch

      5 min read

    • Article

      There Is No Planet B

      Sep 15, 2021

      Climate change can no longer be denied. In fact, a report released in August by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) makes it clear that global warming has been caused by human activity, and that the situation is even more dire

      3 min read

    • Article

      From The Editor-in-chief

      Nov 13, 2021

      In 1975, an American geochemist gave us one of the most important phrases of our times—global warming. In his research paper, ‘Climatic Change: Are we on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?’, Wallace Smith Broecker predicted that an exponential

      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Climate Crisis

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Climate Crisis - Dieter Schelling

      Introduction

      "The first step to solving a problem is recognizing that there is one."

      David Putnam

      ––––––––

      We're the first generation to feel the impact of climate change – and the last generation that can actually do something about it.

      Gov. Jay Inslee – Washington State

      ––––––––

      We don't need hope, we need action.

      Greta Thunberg

      ––––––––

      This is not about survival of the planet, this is about survival of ourselves.

      David Attenborough

      A Victim of Climate Change

      The Rhone glacier is the source of the Rhone river, which provides water to much of Southern France. It is melting and will soon disappear. This photo was taken by myself on 15th September 2019. The horizontal line on the opposite side of the valley marks the level of the glacier in 1850. The white patch on the left-hand side at the end of the ice marks an area where a tour operator has tried to preserve the ice by covering the glacier with white canvas. He operates an ice grotto that tourists can visit and desperately tries to prevent the ice from melting.

      Not long ago, the glacier still reached the rocky ridge on the right. Between that ridge and the retreating glacier, a lake has formed. In 1850, the glacier still reached the plane below, which is 450 meters lower than the lake. There, a hotel was built for tourists to admire the glacier. That hotel is now abandoned as the glacier is no longer in sight.

      About the Author

      I am an engineer and planner by profession. My undergraduate studies were in civil and transportation engineering. During my post-graduate studies, I became a planner and learned to apply holistic approaches, that is, to take into account all relevant aspects to problem-solving.  We were a group of engineers, architects, economists, and lawyers who learned to collaborate and jointly tackle national and local planning problems. 

      I spent my professional life in developing countries, building infrastructure, first financed by the Swiss government, and later by the World Bank. A significant part of my work was policy dialogue with the concerned governments. That is, prior to financing investments, we had to ensure that the projects were properly selected - being part of an overall development plan; that they were economically, financially, technically, environmentally and socially sound, and that the capacity to plan, implement and manage the projects was available, and, if not, created. 

      My family and I have lived and still live mainly in three countries: Switzerland, Tanzania, and the United States of America. We have experienced signs of climate change in all three of them. Since I was ten years old, I have been skiing, hiking, and climbing in the Alps. I have seen the glaciers retreat at an increasing rate. Many of the smaller glaciers, meanwhile, have entirely disappeared. In the last five hotter-than-ever-years, ice loss in the Alps was an unprecedented 10% of the remaining volume[1]. If Green House Gases (GHG) are not reigned in, they will have entirely disappeared by 2100. 

      In Tanzania, where I spent most of my adult life, I have seen the ice on Kilimanjaro disappear[2]. In 2015, on our last ascent, we climbed to the top of the mountain without ever stepping on snow or ice[3]. During the ever more frequent and intense El-Nino events, the world's coral reefs, including those in Tanzania, experienced massive bleaching. The reefs are now so depleted that they are of little touristic value - not to speak of what this means for the fish population. 

      Recently, Tanzania has started to construct a hydropower plant with a capacity of producing 2100 Megawatt electricity. Currently, Tanzania does not produce enough electricity, and it needs this power to develop and become a middle-income country. The dam lies on the Rufiji River in the Selous Game Reserve about 300 kilometers inland. Its construction has prompted worldwide protests as it is alleged that it will destroy the game reserve. That is not correct. The lake formed by the dam lies in an area of little interest to animals and tourism, and the dam will make it possible to control the devastating floods experienced down-streams year by year. Tanzania is also building a new electrified railway line from Dar es Salaam to Morogoro, Dodoma, and eventually to Rwanda and Burundi. Some environmentalists seem to prefer that Tanzania build more fossil fuel power plants (the country has substantial offshore natural gas reserves) than use renewable resources and spare the climate.       

      Over the last couple of years, my wife and I have converted a former cow stable in the Swiss Alps into our home. We are proud that this house is carbon-neutral, heated by the sun in summer and firewood in winter, and our electric car is charged with electricity from photovoltaic cells on the roof of the garage.  Nonetheless, even at 1400 meters above sea level, we are not immune to the now more frequent heatwaves caused by global warming. In the summer of 2019, for the first time in living memory, our village experienced a tropical day, which is declared when the maximum temperature during the day exceeds 30°C  and the temperature during the night does not fall below 20°C. 

      I became aware of the urgency of climate change in the early 1990ies when I learned about the creation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and started to read its reports and follow the outcomes of its various global conferences. Now, thirty years later, the world's efforts on tackling climate change are still awfully inadequate[4]. If we keep doing what we have been doing for the past thirty years in the coming thirty years, we will have significantly damaged our environment and caused unprecedented social and economic upheaval. This book aims to help bring the needed change to make sure this does not happen.

      My past experiences, both professional and personal, have given me a global perspective, which I hope transpires in this book. I firmly believe that by using a rational dialogue-based approach to problem-solving, we can tackle the problems related to climate change. We can do this within the existing political and economic systems (considering that liberal democracy and the market economy are the best of all the bad political and economic systems in the world[5]).

      Foreword

      Why this Book?

      Why this book? you might ask when there are so many books out there already on climate change. Well, during a literature search on climate change, I failed to find an easily readable and succinct publication with a global perspective that sets out both the problems and the solutions to global warming. Of course, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the authority for scientific knowledge on climate change, has many publications on the topic. However, IPCC is not supposed to give policy advice, and their reports are challenging to read for the layperson. I have therefore attempted to write a readable, accessible, and personal book on climate change.  I hope I succeeded. 

      Synopsis

      Global warming is real. It is a threat to our existence and especially for future generations. It is caused by humanity burning massive amounts of fossil fuels that nature has stored over millions of years and other Greenhouse Gases (GHG) emitted mainly by agricultural activities. The GHG capture the sun's radiation in the atmosphere and cause the temperature to rise; the result is global warming. The bad news is twofold. First, we need to move fast and halve GHG emissions in the next ten years and stop emitting them altogether within the next 30 years - in one generation! - if we want to avoid catastrophic outcomes of climate change. Second, there is little political will to do this.

      The good news is that we already have all the technical tools to create a GHG-neutral world, and we do not have to suffer substantial discomfort in the process. On the contrary, there is a win-win: we can secure the existence of future generations and create a better and cleaner world.

      The Struggle Between Science and Denial

      The constant flow of bad news regarding climate change leaves many of us hopeless and exhausted. It can give the impression that nothing can be done to stop global warming or that it is too late or too costly to act. Some of us stick our head into the sand, like ostriches, refuting climate change altogether or writing it off as a hoax promoted by political opponents or foreign powers. Others believe climate change is happening but that it is not caused by humans; it is just a natural phenomenon that has occurred many times over in Earth's history and will eventually reverse. Influential individuals state that while climate change is real, there is nothing to worry about and that it may even bring advantages. They claim that we will be able to cope with the warming and that the Governments should leave this matter to the private sector and the markets to resolve.

      We can put all

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1