Climate Crisis at Boiling Point - Poster of the Week
"Wir Bringen Die Pole Zum Schmelzen"
Klaus Staeck
Greenpeace, Steidl Göttingen
Offset, 1988
Heidelberg, Germany
13147
Poster Text: We Bring the Poles to the Melting Point—Most
Catastrophically
The record-breaking temperatures across the U.S., Europe, and Asia this
week are finally making headlines. In the U.S., more than 100 million people
are under heat alerts (30% of the nation); in the UK, some routine hospital
operations were stopped due to record-shattering heat disrupting energy
resources; over 64% of China’s population is experiencing extreme heat
that is detrimentally affecting energy supplies and agriculture already
overwhelmed by severe flooding and landslides; wildfires are ravaging
regions of Spain and Portugal; and over 2,000 people have already died due
to current heat wave conditions in Europe alone.
The heat dome sizzling large swaths of the globe has been a reminder
amidst the distraction of other urgent political chaos that this climate crisis is
the global battle of our lifetime. Extreme heat and drought affect the
unhoused, the elderly, agriculture and livestock, pets and wildlife as entire
ecosystems and agricultural systems become unable to support life. Earlier
this year, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report
revealed that if Earth warms just another nine-tenths of a degree Celsius,
land burned by wildfires globally will increase by 35%. The impact this will
have on world hunger is unconscionable; already a drought in the Horn of
Africa has left over 20 million people without food. And with 4 corporations
controlling 90% of global grain trade, the poorer (and exploited) nations of
the Global South are the first to bear the repercussions, despite emitting the
least amount of carbon emissions.
It is no longer just the future of younger generations being stolen by the rich,
it is the present too. We must stop using future tense when referring to
natural disasters, refugee migration, starvation and death rates – the
emergency is HERE.
References:
https://ww w.cnn.com/2022/07/21/weather/us-extreme-heatthursday/
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion /europeans-heat-wave-conundrumair-
conditioners-climate-change-rcna39447
https://w ww.democracynow.org/2022/7/21/heat_wave_europe_climate_crisi
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/30/cap italism-is-killingthe-
planet-its-time-to-stop-buying-into-our-own-destruction
https://www .democracynow.org/2022/7/21/vanessa_nakate_global_south_af
http s://whyy.org/articles/un-ipcc-climate-change-report-uninhabitable-planetcode-
https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/20 /china/china-summer-extreme-weatherclimate-
change-intl-hnk-mic/index.html
Resources:
https://www.redcross. org/get-help/how-to-prepare-for-emergencies/types-ofemergencies/
https://www.homelesshub.ca/resource/beating-heat-street
Chttps://www.homelesshub.ca/resource/beating-heat-street
(for UK citizens)
https ://www.who.int/publications/i/item/WHO-EURO-2011-2510-42266-
https://www.cdc.gov/disasters/extremeheat/index.html
https://www.weather.gov/chs/heat