Why We Can’t Stop Climate Change
Humans didn’t consciously create climate change. It is human conceit to believe we can consciously stop it. Here are four reasons we failed, and very good reasons to succeed.
#4: Knowledge Does not Lead to Action
Humanity understood the connection between global warming and greenhouse gas emissions for over a century, yet we did nothing.
On August 23, 1856, American scientist Eunice Foote read her findings before the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “The highest effect of the sun’s rays,” she said, “I have found to be in [carbon dioxide] gas.” She went on to add, “An atmosphere of that gas would give to our earth a high temperature.”
In 1896, Arvid Högbom noted that manmade CO2 emissions could contribute to this effect. In 1908, Svante Arrhenius noted that, at then current rates (emissions had already increased since 1896) global warming could take place within a few centuries. By 1938, Guy Stewart Callendar compared temperature recordings of the last century with CO2 emissions. His research showed a striking and direct parallel between increased heat and increased emissions. Over the next half century scientists continued to refine the issue, informing…