Did we save ourselves from climate change at Paris?
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- published 13 December 2015 | modified 12 November 2017
Earth has been around for about 4.6 billion years, and it experienced many changes during that period of time. Its history, including the development of ecosystems, can be unravelled by looking at life's remnants in its rock layers. Geologists have marked each period with a meaningful title, such as Cambrian, Jurassic, Holocene and Pleistocene.
Today, scientists argue that we have started a new and even more historic period in the Earth's story: the Anthropocene. For the first time in the planet's history, one species is its primary designer - humans. And this species has a very destructive behaviour. We are destroying our own species' future. We are on the verge of the point-of-no-return. Unless....
Can we stop the process depicted in the animation above?
Well, yesterday, after several earlier attempts which failed miserably the World's 195 leaders reached an historic agreement on climate change at the COP21 in Paris. An agreement by the way that - due to its last minute effort - shows that humans as a species lack a considerable amount of responsibility towards future generations. Already in 1972 the Club of Rome said there was a limit to growth, and that precautionary action would suit us. Nobody listened or acted...
