What is Climate Change?

What is climate change?

Climate change is caused by the persistent build-up of greenhouse gases such as Carbon Dioxide (CO2) in the Earth's atmosphere.

The more fossil fuel (oil, gas and coal) we burn for transportation or to generate energy, the more greenhouse gases we emit into the atmosphere, and the hotter our planet gets.

Today, our world is hotter than it has been in two thousand years. By the end of the century, if current trends continue, the global temperature will likely climb higher than at any time in the past two million years.

And the result of this rising temperature? Extreme weather events like irregular monsoons, rapidly recedingglaciers, fiercer storms, prolonged droughts, heat-waves, and worse.
All this together is called Climate Change. It's real, and it's here, even as you read this.


What will climate change do to you........

Just look around you. You don't have to be a scientist to notice that millions of people – many of them in India – are already at risk of losing their livelihoods. By the time your children are grown up, climate change could cause 150,000 additional deaths per year, with an increased risk of hunger, malaria, flooding and severe water shortages.

When all this happens, when the Earth itself is threatened, then all that lives on it is also threatened.And that includes you. Your children. And your children's children.Never before has humanity been forced to grapple with such an immense environmental crisis. If we do not take urgent and immediate action to stop global warming, the damage could become irreversible.

The world‘s glaciers are already melting at a frightening rate, and this is set to increase. This means that the rivers they feed will dry up in many parts of the world and this will seriously endanger water supplies. The Gangotri glacier is retreating at the rate of 34 metres per year. If it shrinks any faster, the Ganga could dry up, threatening the very survival of over 500 million people in this subcontinent.

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Here are 6 simple things you can do and how much CO2 you’ll save doing them…

1. Replacing one regular incandescent light bulb with a CFL will save 150 pounds of CO2 a year.

2. Walk, cycle, car-pool or take public transport more often. You'll save one pound of CO2 for every mile you don’t drive!

3. You can save 2,400 pounds of CO2 every year by recycling just half of your household waste.

4. Keeping your tyres inflated properly can improve mileage by more than 3%. Every gallon of petrol saved keeps 20 pounds of CO2 out of the atmosphere!

5. You can save 1,200 pounds of CO2 if you cut down your garbage by 10%.

6. Simply turning off your TV, DVD player, stereo and computer when you’re not using them will save you thousands of pounds of CO2 a year.


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