Before The Last Glacier Melts

After the Second World War, the world economy entered a period of unprecedented economic growth. This growth process not only reduced relative poverty in almost all nations but also enabled developed nations to reach their current level of prosperity. However, this growth process also brought with it problems about the sustainability of this growth. The Club of Rome, one of the main think tanks that put forward such problems, posed the question "How much more is it possible to grow?" to a group of scientists from MIT University. Donella Meadows and her coworkers published their work to answer this question in a report called The Limits to Growth. This report, published in 1972, has since been regarded as the fundamental study that has determined the growth limits of our civilization. Although The Limits to Growth is a very comprehensive report, it looks at the problem of growth from a narrow perspective and asks, “Do we have enough resources to grow even more?” and then tries...

We need to take urgent steps to ensure that the effects of the climate crisis do not get much worse than they already are. Each year we are late to act only increases the size of the disaster that will befall humanity. Actually, the calculation is quite simple. If we want to limit global warming to 1.5℃, we can release a maximum of 420 billion tons of carbon dioxide starting today. The upper limit we can emit for the 2℃ limit is 1270 billion tons of carbon dioxide. If the emissions exceed these limits, the temperature will increase even more and the disasters we will experience will intensify and diversify. As humanity, we emit 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. If we continue like this, we will exceed the 1.5℃ limit by 2033 and the 2℃ limit by 2054. In order not to exceed these limits, the first thing we have to achieve is to come to a decision together. This decision about global warming limits will determine how humanity should act in terms of greenhou...

Let's define the problem first: The Earth has warmed by about 1.3°C in the last two centuries. This warming had serious negative consequences for all of us. The majority of humanity is not at all satisfied with global warming and the problems it brings. In fact, from the point of view of most individuals, the situation started to reach the level of disaster. With their studies, scientists reveal that further increases in this warming will cause not only linear but also exponential damage. What this simply means is that when warming rises from 1.3℃ to 2.6℃, the disasters we will experience will not only double, but perhaps tenfold. That's why we need to keep global warming as low as possible. Scientists agree that this critical threshold should not exceed 2℃. In fact, it is necessary to keep it much lower, for example, at 1.5℃ if possible, so that especially people living in areas very close to sea level do not face major disasters. Beyond that, scientists can calculate the maxi...