Navigating through the climate chaos - a students perspective

The main factors that influence climate change:   How we source materials (mining/farming/artificially) can destroy habitats and increase emissions.  How we manufacture goods (industrial processes) can increase greenhouse gas emissions  How we transport goods (CO2-intensive international trips) Our mass consumption (electricity/food/material possessions) The success of a Circular Economy (a system based on the re-cycling of goods to reduce waste)  Now we know the factors, let's move on to the effects:   It can be hard to visualise the impacts these factors have on Earth, which is why I think the 9 Planetary Boundaries  (2023) is a very useful tool:  Extra information to support the graph: Ocean acidification : 1/4 of  C02 emitted dissolves in the ocean, here it forms carbonic acid, altering ocean chemistry making it more acidic. Beyond a threshold concentration, this rising acidity makes it hard for organisms such as corals and some shellfish and ...

Source Some people believe consumerism is not "our fault", it's the suppliers responsibility not to create unnecessary products. However,  would these businesses - who manufacture and sell the unnecessary products - function without the demand from consumers?  Karl Marx argues that we are driven by materialism. My first reaction to this statement was to disagree with it, being confident in the fact that I am not a materialistic person. Then as time went by I started to reflect on my purchasing behaviour and the utility of the material items I wanted.  I realised that trends and marketing techniques were powerful and do influence my behaviour.  Consumers:  The customers main drawback in this argument is the average consumption of an individual. The UK population consumes  higher than the world average  :  15.3 tonnes of materials per year per person . So, we consume a lot. These are the factors that affect this: Source - Shopping as ...

Consumerism is an economic and social system that promotes the purchase of products and services as a means of achieving happiness .  Jeff Bezos said that, at its worst, consumerism is getting people to buy things that "don't actually improve their lives". This is the same man who owns an online retailer which gives you 462 results when you search up "useless gifts".  Here is a quick introduction to how consumerism impacts the environment: Consumerism motivates individuals to acquire more and newer things all the time, causing many people to discard their old ones, resulting in a large influx of waste. Due to the constant demand, companies need to manufacture these items at a rapid pace and at a larger scale.  This means that companies use massive amounts of energy and resources to meet this demand. Minimising production cost usually takes priority when companies create products, meaning that the manufacturing of these products are usually outsourced to other c...

Is Climate Change Natural? Yes, to an extent. The planet's temperature and climate has always fluctuated over time, just not at the rate it is now. You might hear people say that it's a natural phenomenon and humans have little impact on the climate, which is not entirely true. As you can see by the graph below, since the agricultural revolution began (near the end of the 18th century), greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere have increased leading to a spike in global temperatures.  The 'Hockey stick' graph from the IPCC's Third report (2001): Variations of the Earth's surface temperature over the last 1000 years.  Before humans began using fossil fuels, naturally occurring greenhouse gases contributed to the Earth's habitability. Without them, the average temperature of the world would be below freezing.  The main greenhouse gas you've probably heard of is Carbon Dioxide or CO2. The levels of CO2 are now at their highest in at least 3 million years....