Climate change in the light of integral ecology

Abstract

There is no doubt that climate change is a crucial issue on the global agenda of the countries organised under the orbit of the United Nations. It is a human-made disturbance in the energy balance of the earth’s climate system. The climate system manifests the amount, distribution, and net balance of energy at earth’s surface (from the ground to below 30 km height). Thus, climate change can even be thought of as the tip of the iceberg of other interdependent environmental concerns such as, among others, deforestation, land-use changes, forest fires, droughts, floods, sea-level rise, and death of coral death reefs, increased climatic extremes, among others. Likewise, for those of us who do climate science, the problem as such is a long-standing one. Since the late 19th century, from considerations of simple radiation budget, it has been known that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere directly affects the earth’s heat balance; a doubling of this amount would lead to a 2oC increase in the global average temperature. Over the years, not only has the number of publications on this subject increased, but the scientific evidence of the last decades has consolidated the theory of anthropogenic global warming. [excerpt]