“How Close Are the Planet’s Climate Tipping Points?" Article Reflection No. 108 (8/25/2024)

Article: “How Close Are the Planet’s Climate Tipping Points?”

Reflection: 

In the article “How Close Are the Planet’s Climate Tipping Points?,” journalists Mira Rojanasakul and Raymond Zhong provide an overview of how escalating temperatures can affect coral reefs’ health, thawing permafrost, separate West Antarctic ice, reduce Greenland’s ice, change Atlantic currents, lose the Amazon Rainforest, and change the monsoon in West Africa. As the article describes the various “tipping points” that illustrate the hard-to-accept realities of global warming, it provides global maps alongside a scale that visually show the status quo.

Across the different categories, this status quo appears bleak and much, much too close to the “tipping points.” These maps and their implications are scary and I wonder how the world will be 50 years from now. Shouldn’t there be more urgency now in order to prevent catastrophe in the future? I don’t want to sound pessimistic and all but I can’t help asking that question. I feel like we, as a society and myself included, should hold ourselves truly accountable. Once we do that, I think we will be able to cooperate more and make progress. But how to reach that standard is a whole new challenge in itself.