Hope in the Battle Against Climate Change

While 2014 may be the hottest year recorded thus far, not all hope is lost yet in the fight against climate change. Jason Box, the scientist behind the Dark Snow Project, posted an article from Motherboard on his Twitter which highlights the ways in which humans this year have begun to effectively organize to fight climate change.

The “Clean Power Plan” released this year by the Obama administration hopes to put the Environmental Protection Agency in charge of regulating the carbon emissions released from fossil fuel-burning plants. If all goes to plan, carbon emissions from power plants are expected to drop 30 percent by 2030.

In August, 300,000 fed-up citizens took to the streets of New York to call for action against climate change. This march even managed to make international headlines.

One of the biggest surprises this year was the deal between Obama and China’s President Xi Jinping to cut carbon emissions. Considering that the United States and China are the world’s two biggest polluters, this is an important agreement in the fight against climate change.

Another important event in the international community happened this past December, when 180 nations met in Lima for an annual climate meetings. Each of the delegates from the 180 countries all agreed to reduce carbon emissions. The emerging plan is non-binding and has been criticized for being weak, but I think it’s still a small step in the right direction.

Hopefully this year, the international community will commit to stronger deals in the fight against climate change at the COP20 meeting in Paris.  If all goes well at this meeting, the world may finally produce an effective climate deal.

There is still much to be done if we really want to combat climate change, but hopefully people around the world are finally realizing that if we are going to do anything, we need to do it now.