Thoughts about “How Extreme Weather Is Shrinking the Planet” by Bill McKibben
By: Cheney Hao
Tags: Climate Change, Earth, International Relations, Bill Mckibben

In the article “How Extreme Weather Is Shrinking the Planet” Bill McKibben outlines how climate change will lead to extreme weather making the earth inhabitable.

Starting the piece from his own experience as a young scientist, the author illustrates how the greenhouse effect named thirty years ago in the early period of climate science already had data which was persuasive and freighted with sadness. The reason for this behind industries and careless of humanity, which has already failed to combat “the greenhouse effect with the White House effect”. Taking readers back to the starting point of the greenhouse effect, the author gives a comprehensive scale of how it was before climate change became one of the most serious global risks today. Surprisingly, the greenhouse effect was already frightening back then yet none of the people in seats of power around the world successfully fought it, eventually causing the theoretical threat to become a fierce daily reality. Readers of this article will definitely feel irritated and seized with fear from the short drawback and equipped with the lens that helps them to fully understand the issue.

The author brings us back to the harsh reality of today, a worldt filled with wildfires, heat waves, and rising sea levels, causing the planet to be at risk of becoming uninhabitable. Fires in California, for instance, have razed more than ten thousand buildings and killed at least sixty-three people; with more than six hundred others missing. Countless disasters are already making the world pay a lot (costs of climate change — human life, economic losses risks to biodiversity and ecosyms), What’s worse, the land and space available for humans to live is shrinking. For example, people now are afraid to walk across a grassy meadow because of the proliferation of ticks bearing Lyme disease which have come with the hot weather; people are unable to swim off beaches because of jellyfish, which thrive as warming seas kill off other marine life, have taken over the water.

“Climate change” has become a very familiar term after thirty years of heating. However, the situation is still breaking records. Peaceful and gorgeous ecosystems are contaminated, or even ruined. The islands supported by fresh water are intruded by salt water, glaciers frozen for million years are melting, the crop fields ensuring people’s meals are polluted with salt, all showing that the interdependent ecosystems are having irreversible chain reactions.. Not only human beings are greatly influenced by the boomeranging, but the earth as a whole is deeply threatened by it. (explain)

We are on a path to self-destruction, yet there is nothing inevitable about our fate. Action can and must be taken the international community of shared future for mankind. Since 2015, hundreds of thousands of people are now marching on the street and demanding actual changes. Countries are making decisions, individuals are protesting, environment is healing. I believe we can make anything happen if we commit to change and address climate change, and act in the best interests of the environment and sustainability.. During the unprecedented period of coronavirus, people are seeing the feasibility of lowering CO2 emissions. However, I wish someday, we can achieve the goals without the expense of millions of lives.