Days of intense heat have become a routine in the life of Brazilians. The latest heat wave recorded in February saw temperatures above 36ºC, or 96ºF, in the metropolitan city of São Paulo; the big question behind this is why is the planet warming up and what are the consequences of it?
“We have passed the stage of global warming, we are in a climate emergency or global boiling“
says Paulo Artaxo, member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
In an interview given in 2023, Artaxo points out that the planet is warming up and that this increase in heat favors extreme weather events, such as this heat wave that happened in São Paulo. According to him, we have entered a new phase of global heating that will put climate change on an alarming stage, which means many of our socio-economic structures are at risk – industry, agriculture, life in cities, among others.
The year of 2025 just proved to the world that it has been warming up faster and faster compared to other times recorded in history, and the phenomenon El Niño is not the main cause of this warming. It is worth remembering that outside of Brazil, the climate change has also become alarming: a clear example of this is the intense and sudden fire due to the hot and dry climate in Southern California and the meteorological impact in places like Africa and Asia.
EXTREME CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF CLIMATE CHANGE
It is common knowledge that the burning of fossil fuels and the emission of greenhouse gases have been intensifying the planet’s temperature. However, what many don’t know is that the emission of these gases also happens when packaging and distributing foods and sourcing energy for residential and commercial buildings, which consume more than half of all electricity produced in devices such as air conditioning, lighting and household appliances.
According to ONU, environmental factors claim the lives of around 13 million people. Extreme weather changing patterns are expanding the number of respiratory diseases and making it difficult to maintain healthy ecosystems due to air pollution, forced displacement, and increased hunger and malnutrition in places where people cannot grow crops or find enough food. Other factors such as higher temperatures, warming ocean waters, and loss of terrestrial and marine species due to forest fires or extreme temperature changes are also a concern of this crisis.
the international debate
The denialist discourse of the current president of the United States, Donald Trump, who considers global warming a fraud, makes it difficult to take the current issues seriously and gather the populations and their attention to control fires and floods and high levels of air pollution in the country.
The most recent fire happened in California in January and it was notable for turning the sky orange; it also consumed an area of 38 km² according to CNN. The huge fires that happened this year in the Castaic Lake area of Los Angeles County forced people to evacuate under “immediate threat to life” warnings, while a big part of Southern California remained under the red flag warning for “extreme fire risk” due to strong and dry winds.
Africa, Asia and the rest of the Americas are also being impacted by these meteorological phenomena; food insecurity and water crises are the main concern in these places.
Usually, in these regions, indigenous people, small food producers and low-income families suffer the most from adverse climate impacts, according to the IPCC sixth assessment report. It should be noted that the threat, exposure and vulnerability of the local population contribute to the impact they suffer in relation to climate change.
Because of global warming, Sub-Saharan Africa faces frequent droughts, heatwaves and floods, which are aggravated by low levels of economic development, poor infrastructure and dependence on subsistence agriculture, while South Asia, such as India, Paquistan and Nepal, experiences devastating floods, cyclones, heat waves and landslides as the crisis’ side effects.
South America is also vulnerable when we take the Amazon basin into consideration, as it is in extreme danger due to the flora and fauna that is being lost in the fires exacerbated by climate change and deforestation. In 2023, the Amazon forest hit the biggest drought in its history along with an intense heat wave, which is a serious problem, as the rainforest moistens the atmosphere and modulates its circulation and without it, the climate will change and , as a result, there will be a worsening of droughts that will affect all regions of Brazil.
Although these are just a few recent examples of how the climate crisis has worsened as a result of human actions and today decrees a global state of emergency, it has existed and impacted us since 1800- however, despite it being an old problem, we can still take some actions now.
is there a solution for the climate crisis?
In an interview for Her Campus, the geography teacher André Batista de Negreiros, who is an Associate Professor at the Federal University of São João del-Rei, Minas Gerais, pointed out that: “We urgently need to take the climate crisis seriously so that we do not reach an irreversible point in the process. Measures are needed, such as investments in technology for the decarbonization of industrial sectors and carbon capture, actions, agreements and specific legislation and, in my opinion, a very important point, which is education and awareness for the next generations.”
For André, we need to work from a perspective of adaptation to a new reality, one that is associated with the search for mitigating problems and actions that stop global warming. This adaptation must be attributed to actions such as alert systems such as those carried out by Civil Defense on our cell phones for the population about heavy rains, protection of vulnerable areas, public health related actions, ecosystem preservation and conservation, among others.
It is worth mentioning that the biggest problem in relation to this global climate crisis is the increase in heat in the planet, which results in changes in climate events, such as more frequent floods and tornadoes. These conditions create a chain reaction effect, as environments transformed by global warming create conditions conducive to its devastating effects – the professor explains.
“There is still a lack of more robust global actions in search of mitigations to global warming, which adds to a scenario of armed conflicts and harms dialogue and interaction between activities. These social and political perpectives can be considered part of the crisis.”
-says Negreiros
A study published by USP Newspaper points out that there are solutions to minimize global warming impacts, but it is necessary to act as quickly as possible; for example, greenhouse gas emissions need to fall 43% by 2030 to avoid an increase in 1.5ºC according to the IPCC. The temperature increase should not exceed this number as in the long term it could affect life on Earth.
To put the brakes on global warming once and for all, the world needs to become “carbon neutral” around 2050 (to stabilize warming at 1.5ºC) or 2070 (for the 2ºC limit) according to data mentioned on the Paris Agreement back in 2015. This limit was chosen because it represents a critical point of the catastrophic increase in climate events – this means that all the carbon released by human activities into the atmosphere needs to be reabsorbed in some way, whether through natural or technological means.
It’s time for change! Faced with the constant heat waves we have experienced in recent times, heavy rains, losses of ecosystems and terrestrial life globally, the climate cause today declares a state of emergency and only we, as humans, will be able to change this scenario. The message that remains is: we are the first generation to see the effects of climate change up close and we are also the last to have the opportunity to change this. Even in a crisis, there is still hope that the climate situation can be reversed, but for this to happen, society needs to act now!
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The article above was edited by Marina di Bernardo Babichak.
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