We Are Making the World More Unsafe for Our Children

As the climate crisis escalates, children are becoming the realists about the future, while adults live in denial

- Bibek Bhattacharya

The world has warmed up by around 1.3 degrees Celsius since the beginning of the industrial era, about 100-150 years ago. Right now, it is warming at the rate of 0.27 degrees Celsius per decade. The only way to stabilize and then stop this runaway warming is to stop the source, which is the burning of fossil fuels like oil, coal, and gas for our energy needs.

The latest climate science is pretty clear—at current rates of warming, and without drastic action to move to renewable energy (RE), we are staring at a warming of 3 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, perhaps even earlier. There's a safety mark, which is to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. But in order to reach that goal we have less than two years to stop all fresh fossil fuel emissions (i.e., planet heating gases like carbon dioxide and methane). But with emissions actually rising year-on-year, that is clearly not going to happen.