What is climate change?
What is climate change?
Climate change means that temperatures and weather patterns on the earth, change. Throughout earth’s history, the climate has changed many times, usually over thousands or tens of thousands of years. However, these changes have happened extremely fast over the last 100 years. There is a clear link between humans burning increasing amounts of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas), higher concentrations of greenhouse gases (like CO2 and Methane) and warmer temperatures around the globe. You can see the temperature changes in Derby since 1850 on the #ShowYourStripes website.
This rapid change in the Climate is the single biggest threat facing the world.
The United Nations states that:
The world is now warming faster than at any point in recorded history. Warmer temperatures over time are changing weather patterns and disrupting the usual balance of nature. This poses many risks to human beings and all other forms of life on Earth.
Learn more about what climate change is on the United Nations website.
So, what does this mean for Derby?
Derby has seen and will see impacts like:
- more frequent periods of extreme hot weather
- more severe storms
- increased flooding, including areas which haven’t historically been affected
- increased drought
- an increase in vector-borne diseases (for example, Dengue fever carried by mosquitos)
- loss of species and habitats in our parks and green spaces
- food may cost more because it is harder to grow
The good news is that acting on climate change brings lots of opportunities and benefits. You can find out more in the next section.
Opportunities and Co-benefits
Tackling climate change doesn’t just reduce CO2e emissions, it will help address other issues, like air pollution, energy bills, and poor health. For example, insulating homes to reduce energy consumption will create jobs and improve people’s health, as well as reducing energy use and in turn, the cost of bills. These things are often called co-benefits or win-win opportunities and show that tackling climate change will also improve a wide range of other social, economic and environmental problems. To help everyone understand the opportunities of acting on climate change, we have added the co-benefits of each action in our Climate Change Action Plan 2025 – 2027.
You can see more examples of co-benefits in this video from the United Nations.
Challenges and risks
Like other global problems such as pandemics, there are some challenges and risks we need to be aware of.
One of the biggest risks is that we don’t act fast enough to prevent the worst effects of climate change. As a Council we recognise the need to act quickly so we declared a Climate Emergency in May 2019.
One big challenge is money. Although acting on climate change will create new jobs, reduce bills and make people healthier, we need to make some big investments to achieve these goals.