By Holden Baird | Observer Contributor
Photo by Ross Stone on Unsplash
Recent headlines illustrate the news media’s fractured focus between a bewildering number of immediate domestic and international concerns. The stock market hiccups as tariff negotiations stumble, the wars in Gaza and Ukraine rage on, the newly-minted DOGE initiative continues its disruption of the federal government, the executive branch issues a dizzying flurry of executive orders, controversy erupts over alterations to immigration policy, and a steady rollback of LGBTQ+ rights and protections pushes on. In general, the average American is largely preoccupied by skyrocketing living costs, which played a significant role in determining the outcome of the 2024 Presidential election. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, energy bills are up 40% and groceries by 25% since 2020. Housing prices surged nearly 18% in 2021 alone as indicated by the Freddie Mac House Price Index. Despite this, Congress has not approved a federal minimum wage increase since 2007 and it presently sits at an astonishing $7.25 per hour. Understandably, public consciousness is dominated by day-to-day matters of survival; a few have the remaining mental real estate available to concern themselves with the more far-reaching issues detailed above. Yet the greatest threat, the wide-reaching consequences of which manifest in nearly every realm of public interest, has predominantly been pushed to the periphery.Anthropogenic climate change- that is, alterations to the world’s climate system that can be concretely traced back to human activity- threatens the present and future wellbeing of humanity on a magnitude far greater than any economic fluctuation or military conflict.
The monstrous repercussions of climate change struck as recently as January of 2025, when wildfires burned over 57,000 acres of San Diego County and the Los Angeles metro area, destroying more than 18,000 homes and buildings, killing 29 people and forcing the evacuation of over 200,000 area residents. Total economic losses are predicted to exceed $50 billion. The wildfires were dramatically amplified when the dry, 100-mile-per-hour Santa Ana winds merged with severe ongoing drought conditions and an abnormal accumulation of vegetation resulting from record-breaking storms the previous year. Just three months earlier, Hurricane Helene tore through North Carolina, dealing tens of billions of dollars in damage and killing 106 people with another 26 still unaccounted for. Researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and World Weather Attribution are in agreement: abnormally warm ocean waters dramatically increased Helene’s rainfall, strengthened her wind speeds, and fed her the energy required to inflict such extraordinary devastation. Yet in spite of the scientific consensus regarding the cause behind these catastrophic weather events, public discourse and media coverage have primarily centered on extraneous political arguments over endangered species of fish and funding-related finger pointing. The politicization of climate change has made it increasingly difficult to see the forest beyond the treeline.
In 2015, the United Nations adopted the Paris Agreement, an international treaty intended to address the growing threat of climate change. Under the agreement, nations would work to limit emissions with the goal of keeping global warming to less than 1.5℃ above pre-Industrial levels. Staying within the limit would have required steep changes to transportation, industry and energy systems that are unimaginable amid today’s peak fossil fuel consumption. The planet exceeded that limit for an entire year between February 2023 and January 2024, an early warning sign that the climate may be dangerously close to surpassing it for good. Based on current emissions and mitigation efforts, the planet is on track to warm 2 to 3℃ above pre-Industrial levels, the climate impact of which is nearly unthinkable. On January 21, 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the nation’s withdrawal from the agreement altogether, signaling his intention to make no effort to prevent the crisis.
Anthropogenic climate change is not a hypothetical future scenario; it is an observable, ongoing phenomenon that forms the basis of one of the most extensively-studied (and rigorously challenged) scientific theories that an overwhelming majority of climate scientists- over 97% of them, per NASA- agree upon. Beyond increasingly frequent extreme weather events, conservative projections for the next twenty years foretell worsening food and water shortages, rising sea levels and coastal displacement, public health crises and disease spread, all of which will contribute to worsening geopolitical tensions, resource conflicts, humanitarian crises, forced migrations, disaster-burdened economies and supply chain disruptions. However, the problem with these forecasts is that they create the misconception that climate change can only progress slowly and gradually. Because the Earth’s climate consists of many sensitive atmospheric feedback systems, experts warn of the potential for abrupt, nonlinear change scenarios- called climate tipping points. Sudden clathrate melt, a collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, an extensive Amazon rainforest dieback, a major ice sheet collapse, or a rapid stratospheric warming that disrupts the jet stream could result in swift, widespread disaster for the planet and become more difficult to predict or avoid with each fraction of a degree of warming above pre-industrial levels.
While staying informed on national and international news is important, the world cannot afford to lose sight of this issue. Worsening climate change is a problem that could ultimately render all other matters concerning human life on this planet irrelevant if it is allowed to proceed unchallenged. No citizen of Earth, MWCC students included, is exempt from its consequences.
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