Climate change is a long-term shift in global or regional climate patterns. The term climate change often refers specifically to the rise in global temperatures from the mid-20th century to the present. Over the last century, Earth’s temperature has risen by one-degree Fahrenheit, indicating progressive warmth. This trend reveals that global temperatures could rise as much as 50° Fahrenheit by the end of the century, should no technologies prove innovative enough to significantly impact climate change mitigation in America. Contrary to this warning, there exists an adequate amount of sustainability projects aimed at diminishing and reversing the impacts of climate change.
While transportation accounts for nearly a third of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., developments in the electric sectors of the transportation market are beginning to blossom. Most major car companies are beginning to produce electric cars; Tesla Inc., for example, focuses solely on electric car production. With the flourishing of electric sectors, non-electric sectors are diminishing. Companies such as ChargePoint have begun to complement this transition by installing charging stations throughout the country, and over 62,000 stations located globally. Developments in the electric sectors are approaching grander scales as well, with Tesla Inc. planning to commercially release an electric semi-tractor trailer, and competitor, Rivian, planning to release electric pick-up trucks in the near future, with a potential yield in investments of as much as $700 million from companies such as Amazon.
While nuclear power has always been a sensitive subject for environmentalists and scientists – a subject noticeably omitted from numerous climate change policies – nuclear fusion can prove advantageous to climate control mitigation. Nuclear fusion doesn’t come with the risk of meltdown that nuclear fission plans carry. It produces waste with short-lived radioactivity, and has the potential to produce immense amounts of energy effectively rendering fossil fuels inert. Though fusion is still a hypothetical source of energy, consistent milestones are being achieved toward its realization. Nuclear fusion company, Tokamak Energy, currently experiments with heating hydrogen and hydrogen plasma up to 100 million degrees Celsius to produce fusion energy and deploy the world’s first nuclear fusion reactor.
Disney, one of the world’s largest entertainment companies, aspires to lead by example with the establishment of their admirable and striking objective: Disney intends to reduce their contribution to greenhouse emissions by half by the year 2020. Emissions produced by a $171.7 billion corporation can be considered enormous; as such their position is quite significant. Disney has addressed this objective with its debut of a 270-acre, 50-megawatt solar facility in Florida. This plant is expected to cut Disney’s emissions by 57,000 tons per year through the production of ample energy to operate theme parks in central Florida. Through these means and Disney’s stature in the industry, climate change mitigation will be promoted on a wide – perhaps global – scale.
Substantial challenges exist in the fight against climate change with sizable challenges persisting in experimentations. Harvard’s Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment – ScoPEx – for example, currently combats this front and aspires to spray calcium carbonate into the atmosphere and observe its effects. The expected result is that it will assist the damaged atmosphere by reflecting sunlight back from the earth. This would inadvertently cool the planet, essentially reversing climate change. Nonetheless, predictions pertaining to the effects of this project are erratic; despite this, the experiment is considered valuable due to its potential promise as a solution.
Climate change comes with various consequences, such as rising temperatures, changes in precipitation patterns, and the emergence of more natural disasters. Due to these undesirable conditions, climate control mitigation efforts are being mechanized and otherwise implemented to reverse the effects and further damage to the planet. Sustainability projects and innovative experiments are quickly developing and accomplishing numerous breakthroughs that positively impact mitigation efforts. Through the prevalence and success of these projects, climate change will be rendered slight and manageable with beneficial facilitations.
References
Davis, M. (2019, March 27). 3. Harvard’s SCoPEx project: Dimming the sun. Retrieved from https://bigthink.com/technology-innovation/climate-change-projects?rebelltitem=4#rebelltitem4.
