It comes days after US climate envoy John Kerry confirmed that global population growth is unsustainable, with the number of people expected to reach ten billion by 2050.
“Personally, I don’t think it’s sustainable,” Kerry said in an interview with Agence France Presse in Oslo last Saturday. “We have to figure out how to handle the issue of sustainability and how many people we have taking care of the planet.”
8 مليارات، أي أكثر من ثلاثة وفيما تهدد احتياجات الغذاء والطاقة موارد الكو 9.7 مليارات في م نتصف القرن، وفق توقعات The United Nations.
The Earth’s temperature has risen by around 1.2°C since pre-industrial times, leaving very little room to meet the Paris Agreement target of limiting warming to 1.5°C.
Feeding 8 billion people currently generates more than a quarter of the greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate change, with around 40% coming from livestock farming and food waste, and the rest from rice production, fertilizer use, land conversion and deforestation.
Consequently, climate change in turn complicates food production due to droughts, floods and other extreme weather events.
For his part, Dr. Mohamed Abdel Moneim, the UN’s senior adviser on climate change affairs, said in statements to “Sky News Arabia” that climate change has damage and that damage affects people’s ability to coexist.
Climate change brings higher temperatures, which reduces rain and causes droughts, floods and fires like what is happening in Canada now, and rising sea levels. All of this causes humans to lose their food sources and their lives are at risk as climate change affects food production factors such as water, land, forests, etc. Climate change, for example, threatens the earth with desertification, threatens livestock with new viruses, and threatens plant wealth with fires, and thus makes planet Earth difficult for humans to live on.
Global Environment Facility (GEF) Advisor Magdi Allam agreed with him in his interview with Sky News Arabia that climate change is threatening the sources of life on Earth and thus affecting the ability of humans to co-exist, indicating that the earth is capable of supporting more than 10 billion people, but the problem is to threaten the sources of life therein.
Rise in temperature threatens food sources especially wheat all over the world as rise in temperature slows growth of wheat hence agricultural research centers are modifying wheat genes to be able to resist the changes climatic conditions such as high temperature and lack of water. Studies confirm that by 2050 we will lose 15% of global wheat production, and the effect is spreading to every place in the world, even America and China. FAO confirms that we are currently facing serious climate phenomena and changes, and 3 famous crops will be affected by these changes, namely wheat, coffee and cotton, although some believe that the high temperature will increase cotton production . According to the FAO, there is a Nexas triangle, which is a food security triangle, made up of three elements: water, food and energy. Any imbalance in any of the three elements threatens the ability of humans to live on the Earth’s surface. The Earth’s temperature was expected to increase by 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2050, which is an acceptable rate, but unfortunately recent reports confirm that the Earth’s temperature in 2050 will increase by more than 2.5 degrees Celsius, as the rate of increase currently exceeds 1.2 degrees Celsius. In search of solutions, countries have tended to solve the carbon crisis, some have tended to store it in icy areas, and some have tended to follow the production of biofuels from carbon in a cycle called l reverse of the carbon cycle. In order to be able to coexist and increase the Earth’s capacity to absorb humans, it is necessary to seek alternatives that reduce the rate of global warming. The burning of agricultural waste and forests should be criminalized and the cultivation of carbon-absorbing trees, such as mangroves, should be expanded. In addition, reducing meat consumption leads to reducing the breeding of cows, since they are the largest producer of methane gas, which contributes to raising the temperature. Following the correct controls that reduce Earth’s temperature makes it capable of accommodating an infinite number of people.
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