Climate change is clearly already causing enormous human suffering and economic costs, in the here and now. According to the United Nations, adopting sustainable energy would not only help combat these ills of climate change; it would also save millions of lives per year.
Discussions
of climate change are often abstract. Yet with a dangerous increase in
destructive and a proliferation in large-scale droughts, its adverse effects are becoming more and
more profound.
At
the World Future Energy Summit 2016 last week, U.N. Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon spoke about the importance of moving toward sustainable energy sources.
Ban stressed that adopting sustainable energy technologies will help combat
climate change and prevent the global temperature from exceeding the two degree
Celsius goal. An estimated 1 billion people around the world do not have access
to electricity. Adopting sustainable energy technologies could help provide
access to these people to the resources.
There
are two main policy responses to climate- change mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation addresses the root causes, by
reducing greenhouse gas emissions, while adaptation seeks to lower the
risks posed by the consequences of climatic changes. Both approaches will be
necessary, because even if emissions are dramatically decreased in the next
decade, adaptation will still be needed to deal with the global changes that
have already been set in motion.
Adaptation
measures may be planned in advance or put in place spontaneously in response to
a local pressure. They include large-scale infrastructure changes – such as
building defenses to protect against sea-level rise or improving the quality of
road surfaces to withstand hotter temperatures – as well behavioral shifts
such as individuals using less water, farmers planting different crops and more
households and businesses buying flood insurance.
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