A rapidly changing climate in an era of increasing global carbon emissions

Abstract

Humanity continues to blaze the path towards the increased extraction and burning of fossil fuels without a full understanding of its consequences. With seemingly no end to this finite resource, new drilling and increased extraction opportunities have brought the price of this commodity down. Meanwhile, current assessments on the impact of increased levels of CO2, which are primarily generated from the burning of such fuels, point towards the consequential effects of extreme natural events in light of heatwaves and droughts, heavy rainfall, floods and sea level rise on communities (IPCC, 2014). Climatologists highlight the urgent need to cut down drastically CO2 emissions in view of the longevity of airborne carbon present in the atmosphere (Archer, 2005) and have subsequently placed a red flag on the resulting persistence of the induced warming (Solomon et al., 2010) which can entrench inevitable and highly undesirable consequences.