An editorial in the 8 May issue of the international journal, Nature, phrases it so well in its title: “Adults should finally act like adults on climate change.”
They quote the noted climate sentry, Greta Thunberg, who told the UN Climate Action Summit in 2019, “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.” In this issue of the journal are two articles, one titled “Climate risk for younger generations is set to soar.”
A telling graph shows the percentage of people who will be exposed to heat waves during their lifetime. That percentage grew from 10% for people of high socioeconomic status who were born in 1960 to 79% for those born in 2020, and worse for those of low socioeconomic status. To estimate the number of heat waves that a cohort of people will face, Luke Grant and five colleagues from Belgium, Canada, and Switzerland used calibrated climate models out to the end of the century. They had to use estimates of the continuing growth of greenhouse gases, which remain absolutely alarming.
The heatwaves demonstrably bring not only personal discomfort, up to severe heat stress and death, but also crop failures, droughts, floods (yes!), wildfires, and cyclones. The newer members of the human race will not be thanking us. Act now, act fast.
This has been an outreach activity of the Las Cruces Academy, viewable at GreatSchools.org.
Source: Nature, 8 May 2025, pp. 282 ff.
