Pay Heed To The Climate Signals

The refusal or delayed decision to reverse the dangerous emissions of carbon dioxide will only worsen the warming of the world and invite more destructive climatic consequences. Reversing the worrisome state of climate change requires global rethinking and urgent actions at the individual, community, governmental and international levels. Excessive burning of fossil fuels, mainly petroleum oil and coal, is chiefly responsible for soaring global temperatures that bring undesirable changes in weather patterns and climatic phenomena all over the world. The disastrous results are increasing over the years and decades. 

On the occasion of the World Environment Day 2026, the focus is on the climate with the #NowForClimate theme that calls for urgent action to tackle the most pressing environmental issue of the world. “The planet doesn’t argue. It doesn’t negotiate. It sends signals—rising seas, rising wildfires, heatwaves, melting glaciers. We said 1.5C was the limit. We are crossing it. For decades, the world has heard the climate story with warnings, targets and distant deadlines. Too often, the response has been clouded by noise, delays, distractions and denials,” says the UN. 

Silver lining 

But the world body, through an assessment disseminated by its environmental agency UNEP, also sees a silver lining in the climate clouds. It says that, amid delays and foot-dragging, a positive signal is also coming, with solar panels stretched across rooftops, wind turbines lining the horizons, cities being redesigned and forests being replanted. There is a call to intensify global efforts to reduce carbon emissions, with an urgent need to transition away from fossil fuel consumption. That is possible only by switching to clean energy sources such as hydropower, solar power, wind power, biogas, and geothermal. Energy consumption is needed to run industries, vehicles and even power plants. 

Operating them with fossil fuels sends an excessive amount of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. We call this atmospheric carbon concentration greenhouse gas (GHG), which traps heat and causes the Earth to keep growing hotter as time passes. Development and economic growth are what each country wants to achieve, but the need of the hour is to meet development goals with the use of clean energy. Such an approach leads to what we call green growth and clean and sustainable development. 

The Environment Day theme stresses the need to transform humanity’s behaviour with nature and the earth’s climate. The activities that bring destruction and disasters in the name of development need an urgent review, rethinking and reorientation so that transformed activities are sustainable and environmentally friendly. The ecological system consisting of water sources, soil, forests, wetlands, snow and ice cover, aquatic life, wildlife and their habitats, should be allowed to take their natural course in order to sustain the planet. Undesirable human activities aimed at excessively exploiting the natural resources for economic gains are disturbing the vital ecological systems. For instance, building a hydropower plant can have a good motive towards generating clean energy, but diverting the total flow to the powerhouse while turning a section of the river dry can be ecologically catastrophic. 

Technological innovation and application are called for cleaner energy generation and new modes of transport. Electric cars are cutting down on the consumption of polluting fossil fuels, but equal attention needs to be paid towards potential environmental disasters resulting from poor handling and disposal of batteries. Nuclear power plants are termed a clean energy source, but a lack of a foolproof mechanism to avoid radiation exposure can lead to environmental disasters. 

Such an incident occurred in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant of Japan in March 2011, which caused serious radioactive contamination in the surrounding environment. Sustainable development is a buzzword now, but serious environmental standards are often overlooked in the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) of development projects. Lack of strict policies and regulatory mechanisms can bring ecological disasters even when we are trying to build clean energy projects. 

Actions

Actions on climate change are needed on two fronts side by side. Addressing the root cause of the global increase in temperatures, which causes climate change, calls for bringing down GHG emissions. The problem will be there all the time without taking this crucial step. This calls for total transformation in energy use through a bold switch of policy by world governments towards a green economy and green growth. 

On top of all, political commitment is needed, especially on the part of powerful economies, to embrace the mode of growth that is green, sustainable, and climate-friendly. We can meet our needs, but we cannot fulfill our greed. This principle also applies to the development and power ambitions of nations. The need is to return to the truth of climate science and work to save the planet for future posterity. 

(The author is former Editor-in-Chief of The Rising Nepal.)