The “Tipping Point” of Global Climate Change
It was recorded in September that the amount of carbon dioxide that was in the atmosphere has reached 400 parts per million for the first time in over thousands of years. This specific level was deemed the “tipping point”. This means that scientists have decided that once the levels hit this mark, the global climate would begin to increase at unstoppable rates. 400 parts per million is just one guess at what the tipping point may be, but now that it has reached this level, it is clear that we need to start worrying about our future. The director of the Office of Sustainability, Ben Champion, declared that the levels of global climate change we are feeling now are a result of the carbon levels from a few decades ago. Now that the levels are higher than they were, we need to focus on lowering them before we start feeling those effects. Jonathon Overpeck, co-director of the Institute of the Environment, said that the sudden jump in carbon levels is due to the emergence of developing, industrial China that no one could have predicted 25 years ago. Unlike the American government, the Chinese have recognized their contributions and have begun to take actions towards reducing its carbon emissions. There is no one clear method that one country, state, or even college campus can take towards eliminating carbon dioxide emissions. There is a grave need for philosophical and moral solutions as well as technological or financial solutions.
Although the environment and global climate change is not a product with a price and a fraction of the population using that product, conceptually, it goes along nicely with the class material. For products, there is a range that sales and fraction of the population using the product can fluctuate between while still being able to recover to the usual amount of sales and usage. But, if the fraction of the population using a product falls below its “tipping point” sales will decline and continue to decline until the fraction of the population using the product is zero. This is similar to the environment in that there are certain levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that we can live with and recover from if they get higher than usual, but now that the levels have reached 400 parts per million, this is the “tipping point” of the environment that we cannot recover from unless drastic measures of change are taken. If we continue emissions at the current rates, the global temperatures will increase even more than they already have, and we will be powerless to stop it.
http://www.wildcat.arizona.edu/article/2016/10/400-parts-per-million-weve-reached-a-climate-change-tipping-point