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‘This Is The Team’: Collective Change on Climate
‘Under The Sky We Make’ by Kimberly Nicholas
Under the Sky We Make: How to Be Human in a Warming World is a new book about coping psychologically with the reality of climate change. Global sustainability scientist Kimberly Nicholas puts big scientific concepts into manageable language, balancing realism and hope. This is for people who may not be scientists or policymakers but who already care about ecological sustainability and who are seeking a manageable framework to balance grief and constructive action.
What’s Causing Climate Change
Based on natural cycles, the planet would have been expected to be in a slight cooling phase right now. However, today, due mostly to humanity’s use of fossil fuels, atmospheric greenhouse gas has increased and the world is heating. In pre-industrial times, the CO2 level in the air was 280 parts per million. Scientists said that anything in excess of 350 ppm would dangerously affect the climate; that level was reached in 1987. Today, it’s well over 400 ppm. As a result, global temperatures have risen 1 degree Celsius and are projected to surpass 1.5 degrees by around 2030 and probably 2 degrees by 2060.
Climate change affects agriculture and drinking water, but the problems are more fundamental than that. Animal populations are already shifting dramatically, and some species are being edged out of their last remaining natural habitats. Can they be moved to different conservation areas or moved to zoos? Not really. “Scientists are making desperate attempts at ‘assisted colonization’ to relocate some species and create an ‘insurance population’ to buy more time,” she acknowledges, “but no one thinks this approach will save unraveling ecosystems.” Already, five years ago, 91 percent of the Great Barrier Reef was bleached. In ten years, when we reach 1.5 degrees of warming, most coral reefs will be dead. At 2 degrees of warming, we’ll be lucky to find any coral reef anywhere. They could easily become extinct. Overall, the species extinction rate is already one thousand times higher than what scientists would expect without human influence.
New York City expects the sea level to rise at least two feet by 2100. In the second-highest scenario they’ve modeled, the…
