“A time when we’ve already run out of time” -Squarzoni, Climate Changed

In my opinion, this is one of the most interesting sections of Climate Changed so far. I think the most important quote from this section is on page 98, “A time when we’ve already run out of time”. For the past decades, the speed of CO2 emission has been drastically accelerating. Prior to reading this section of the graphic memoir, I thought that the cause of these CO2 emissions are due to human activity, such as burning fossil fuels and releasing pollution into our atmosphere whether it be from cars or factories. I strongly believed that we could actually reduce CO2 emission to that significant figure of 300 ppm if we all altered our daily life (like walking or car pooling) and switched to natural sources of energy, such as wind and solar. However, this section placed a strong emphasis on CO2 emissions by natural causes. For example, in higher temperatures, photosynthesis tends to slow down and thus absorb less CO2 from the atmosphere (pg. 122). The problem lies within how far we our to reaching the threshold to causing ‘massive change’ within our climate (pg. 113). Squarzoni provides an analogy where he keeps pushing the plate of food towards his wife until it reaches her lap. However, when he closes his eyes and keeps pushing the plate, he does not know when to stop before it reaches his wife’s lap. In the same way, the climatologists are blindfolded as to how close we are to the threshold of causing drastic changes to our atmosphere. Even if we cut CO2 emissions by half, that would still not reduce the warming in the atmosphere enough. After reading this, I began to see how serious of a matter CO2 emissions are. To be quite honest, I think I doubt our world’s ability to reduce CO2 emission to such an extent that our CO2 levels would be at 300 ppm again. My hope for a healthier and safer future for our planet now lies in new technology that would hopefully decrease or even absorb the excess CO2 in our atmosphere.