Climate Change

Any drawing showing a healthy natural scene — trees, animals, clean water — alongside a child doing something helpful such as planting, picking up litter, or turning off a tap. The drawing shows the child understands that their actions affect the natural world.

I can help the Earth by picking up litter near my school. This matters because animals can eat plastic and get hurt, and the Earth looks beautiful when it is clean.

Climate change is the long-term warming of the Earth's climate, mainly caused by humans burning fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas. These fuels release carbon dioxide, which traps heat in the atmosphere and causes the Earth to get warmer. One way this affects people is through changes in rainfall. In some parts of the world, droughts are becoming longer and more severe, making it much harder for farmers to grow food. This is already pushing many families into hunger and poverty, especially in tropical regions where people depend on reliable rain to survive.

Climate change is conventionally understood as an environmental crisis — a problem of rising temperatures, melting ice, and ecosystem collapse. But this framing, while accurate, is incomplete. Climate change is also — and perhaps primarily — a justice issue, because its causes and its consequences are distributed in ways that are profoundly unequal. Understanding it as a justice issue changes not only how we think about the problem but what solutions we consider adequate.

The justice dimension begins with historical responsibility. The wealthy industrialised nations of Europe, North America, and East Asia built their prosperity through two centuries of fossil fuel use. The United States and the European Union together account for approximately half of all cumulative greenhouse gas emissions since industrialisation, despite containing around 15% of the world's population. Meanwhile, the countries facing the most severe consequences — Bangladesh, the Maldives, Somalia, and nations across the Sahel — have contributed negligibly to the problem. Bangladesh emits less than 0.5% of global CO2 but faces catastrophic flooding, saltwater intrusion into farmland, and displacement of millions. This is not a natural disaster — it is a consequence of choices made predominantly by others.

The justice dimension extends to vulnerability. Climate change amplifies existing inequalities. Communities that lack resources to build flood defences, diversify their food systems, or migrate to safer areas are most exposed. Indigenous communities, whose ways of life are intimately connected to specific ecosystems, face cultural loss that cannot be compensated by money. Future generations — who have had no say in the decisions that will shape their world — bear the heaviest long-term burden. The IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report confirms that the most severe impacts will fall disproportionately on the world's poorest and most vulnerable populations.

However, the environmental framing should not be dismissed. Climate change is simultaneously an environmental and a justice crisis — framing it purely as a justice issue risks obscuring the physical urgency. Tipping points do not wait for political agreement on fairness. The melting of permafrost, the destabilisation of ice sheets, and the bleaching of coral reefs are happening regardless of whether we resolve questions of historical responsibility. The environmental framing creates urgency; the justice framing ensures that responses are equitable.

The practical implication is significant. If climate change is primarily a technical problem — emissions to be reduced — then solutions can focus on technology and markets. But if it is a justice issue, then solutions must also address who bears costs, who receives compensation, and who has decision-making power. This is why the recognition of 'loss and damage' at COP27 mattered: it acknowledged that some communities face harms beyond what they can adapt to, and that those responsible have an obligation to compensate them.

In conclusion, climate change is inseparably both an environmental and a justice issue. The physical changes are real and urgent. But they cannot be fairly addressed without confronting who caused them, who suffers most, and what obligations flow from that. A response that focuses only on emissions reductions while ignoring justice will fail both morally and practically — because the countries most needed for global cooperation are precisely those with the strongest grievances about unfairness.

A climate tipping point is a threshold in the Earth's climate system beyond which a change becomes self-reinforcing — meaning it continues and accelerates even if the original cause is removed. Once crossed, tipping points can produce changes that are difficult or impossible to reverse on human timescales.

One significant example is the thawing of Arctic and Siberian permafrost. Permanently frozen ground across northern latitudes contains enormous quantities of organic matter that has been locked in ice for thousands of years. As global temperatures rise, this permafrost begins to thaw, releasing carbon dioxide and methane — both potent greenhouse gases. These additional emissions cause further warming, which causes further thawing, which releases more gas. This is a positive feedback loop: once initiated, it can continue independently of whether human emissions are cut. Scientists estimate that permafrost could release quantities of greenhouse gas equivalent to decades of additional human emissions.

Tipping points strengthen the case for urgent action in two ways. First, they suggest that the relationship between emissions and consequences is not linear — small additional emissions beyond a tipping threshold could trigger disproportionately large and irreversible changes. Second, they mean that delay is especially costly: the longer action is postponed, the greater the risk that tipping points are crossed before emissions are cut. The IPCC has warned that multiple tipping points could interact, creating a cascade of self-reinforcing changes. This makes the conventional argument for gradual, cost-minimising action — wait and see how bad it gets — particularly dangerous.