2018: A tipping point for climate change

As 2018 comes to an end, it can be said that the year has proved to be a major tipping point for the issue of climate change globally as well as in Bangladesh.

15-year-old Greta Thunberg with a sign that reads
 'School strike for the climate', during her protest
against climate change on November 30, 2018.
Greta has camped outside Swedish parliament in
Stockholm and refused to go to school until
things change.

First we had the publication of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on 1.5 degrees which made two very clear scientific findings. First that there will be a world of difference in the severity of adverse climate change impacts between a temperature rise of 1.5 and 2 degrees. It is not just that poor countries would be the only ones to suffer but all countries will suffer very severe adverse impacts with a 2 degree temperature rise. Just to give one example, it will mean the loss of the entire Great Barrier Reef in Australia, one of the great natural wonders of the world. Secondly, it asserted that, even though it would be difficult, it was still possible to keep global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees if all countries acted together to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by reducing use of fossil fuels and switching to 100 percent renewable energy no later than 2050.

Read the story from The Daily Star by Saleemul Huq - “2018: A tipping point for climate change.”