Climate Change has been a hot issue for a good decade and different indicators show quite a bleak outlook for the future of our planet. We all know that we need to combat Climate Change but are we applying ourselves the correct method? Separating the politics from the statistics, the trajectory of Climate Change in the proceeding years will be decided by the population ranging from “under poverty” to “low-income threshold” in Asian countries. According to the Global Carbon Atlas, of the top 5 countries that rank as largest carbon emitters, 3 of them are Asian countries – China, India, and Japan moving down the list, the top 50 would predominantly be tagged by countries in Asia. Now, why is this important? Because these countries possess a massive percentage of population that is striving for simple basic livelihood and social mobility. This essential journey does not allow stakeholders to have space for climate sensibilities. Let us put ourselves in their shoes for a second; what is important for a poor breadwinner with a family? Securing the possibility of their next meal or paying attention to reducing carbon dioxide emissions?
According to the book by Dr. Bjørn Lomborg, “How to Spend $75 Billion to Make the World a Better Place”, the content was composed in collaboration with top economists and Nobel Laureates that ranked global development goals later averaged into a final list. In that said list, addressing global warming and climate change was not even mentioned, but what was mentioned was increasing child nutrition in developing countries stimulating these children to lead more healthier and productive lives when they transition to adulthood creating poverty alleviation and high return on investment in a situation where these productive adults would increase the cumulative brainpower of humanity. On the other side of the argument, where the vast majority speak about alternatives and less consumption, one variable they failed to address is the massive detriment to marginalized communities across the world. WHY? For the simple reason that alternatives are expensive and it's a no-brainer that these stakeholders are already on the less consumption spectrum. Contemplating an example, if the United States, one of the major countries in carbon emissions and greenhouse gases would hypothetically go Carbon Neutral tomorrow, it would not stop or even make a dent in the “climate crisis” we are facing today. However, is the world doomed?
In the book “Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World”, Dr. Hans Rosling explains that through statistical measures we can deduce that the world is becoming better to live in, therefore, there is hope. As per that stats, in the last 20 years, the proportion of the world population living in extreme poverty has almost halved, 60% percent of girls in low-income countries finish primary school and greatly climb into secondary education, global life expectancy has increased to 72.48 years, diseases are easier to combat and treat, technological innovation is escalating upwards, there decline in disaster-related deaths, war-related deaths and predominantly there more “safe” countries than those affected by civil discord. The only issue that was concerning was climate change, assuming that nothing is done about will start affecting humanity at an apocalyptic level at the end of the century because climate change projection models are not quite accurate. Therefore, we have time. Now in this length of time that we have, we should cater toward poverty alleviation efforts and social mobility strides to uplift the massive chunk of the population in Asian countries where they have the space to cultivate a thought about climate change where the battle would no longer be upward.
