Anothertopic related to sustainability is Climate change. The issue of climate changepresents a lot of environmental, social and economical challenges for worldleaders. It relates to other topics which can hinder sustainable development,thus making it worse future generations. Problems that arise out of climatechange involve higher temperatures, crop failure, conflict over land, risingsea levels, climate refugees, increased tropical storms, droughts and heat waves.
It is mainly caused due to anenhanced use of greenhouse gases, but human activities also play a role in itsadvancement. The greenhouse effect isthe a process by which energy that isreflected or released by the earth it moves into the atmosphere where it istrapped and reflected back by a layer of greenhouses gases. The reflectedenergy returns to earth and is absorbed, warming global temperatures. Among thehuman activities, two big contributors are deforestation and greenhouse gasusage. Deforestation is a process by which forests are cut down in order tomake way for human habitation, this can be in the form of factories, firms,houses or any other type of infrastructure- roads, railways, bridges, airportsetc. Albedo is a concept related to climate change.
It is the proportion ofsolar energy that is reflected by a body. By cutting down trees, land getsdeserted and the barren land that exists is only soil or sand. These surfaceshave a higher albedo as compared to trees, which means that they absorb alarger proportion of the sun’s energy and reflect most of the energy. Thiscauses an increase In the earth’s temperature.
