Read time: 4 mins
By Payal Parekh, Programme Director of campaign group 350.org
This summer, the world is experiencing devastating climate change impacts: record heat in Pakistan and India have caused 4,000 deaths, flooding in the Philippines due to torrential downpour has caused 54,000 people to evacuate from their homes.
And it is no longer just poor countries who have been experiencing the worst of climate change. In Japan and South Korea, the heatwave has killed 200 people. In Europe, record-breaking temperatures have destroyed farmers’ crops while the wildfires in Greece killed 92 people. Scientists have already said that climate change made this heatwave twice as likely.
Media reports about a recent scientific study painted a doomsday scenario for the planet, saying we are close to the tipping point of a “Hothouse Earth”, a point of no return where climate change will be uncontrollable.
I started working on climate change over 20 years ago and it’s been a long time since I’ve felt helpless about the impacts.
