Published: 09:32 AM, 05 June 2026
Confronting the Danger of a Warming World
Dr Kanan Purkayastha
Global warming is happening, its effects are already being felt, the harm to humanity, other species and the planet is increasing and too much of it is already irreversible. Recent heatwave in Europe has beaten the UK’s all-time temperature record for May, with highs of close to thirty-five degree Celsius. Heat is known as a ‘silent killer’ because it claims vast numbers of lives that go unaccounted in official statistics. Last summer, scientists attributed two in every three heat related deaths in European cities to climate breakdown.
In 2022, when temperatures hit forty degrees Celsius, about 3000 people in Britain died of causes associated with heat. Studies show air conditioning can cut heat-related deaths by 75 percent. Air-conditioning units use a lot of power. A report published in the Guardian suggests that there have been warnings along the east coast of the US as high temperatures are causing people to switch on air conditioning at the same time, putting strain on grid. Friends of the Earth mentioned that ‘while the use of air conditioning is likely to rise, it is energy-intensive and expensive to run so should be prioritized for those who need it most. Critically, though it must be powered by green energy and not fossil fuels.’
Recent New Scientist report suggests that global sea-level rise is accelerating. Warming in the deep oceans could be one of the factors behind a sharp and sustained spike in the rate of sea-level rise since the early 2010s. Rising sea levels put at risk a number of highly populous cities: Dhaka, Miami, Mumbai, Sydney, Rio de Janeiro, New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Shanghai and many more. Whole regions-among them the Ganges and Nile deltas, most of Florida, the Maldives and a number of Pacific islands-are at risk of disappearing under the sea.
Philosopher A C Grayling argued that sometimes we only think about climate threat to humankind, we regard the loss of many animal and plant species as a ‘side show’. But he thinks this is a bad mistake. The planet is ‘a single organism, an interconnected system forming a single ecology. Human activity distorts it, and is in the process of breaking it completely.’ World Wild Life reported that a million animal species-20 percent of the total and 40 percent of the world’s plant species are now close to extinction. Grayling further added that ‘biodiversity matters because it maintains the system of interdependencies that link the chain of life all the way up from bacteria to plant and animal life to the composition of the air in the earth’s atmosphere.’
In his book The New Climate War, Michael Mann mentioned a tobacco industry’s internal memo about how to handle the threat to its profits from cigarette links to lung cancer Memo said that ‘qualify with doubt, doubt is our product. Sow a doubt and it will be an excuse to those addicted to nicotine to ignore science’s warnings. This is the aim of the fossil fuel industry to sow a doubt and regulators will be hesitant to intervene in case the warnings are wrong. Another aim of the fossil fuel industry is to divide those against them. One of the achievable splits is between those who urge individual action and those who insist that only major policy changes, requiring collective action.
If we consider socioeconomic benefit, then United States alone nearly 10 million people are directly or indirectly dependent on the oil industry for their livelihoods and the reluctance of government to impose stringent obligations on the oil industry to address their climate responsibilities hardly need any other driver. This is a challenge; however, Mann offers a ‘four-point battle plan’. First point is that the it is not too late to act, so doomsayers must be ignored. If we leave unchallenged, then fossil fuel industry will continue with business as usual. The second point is that great hope lies with young people. According to Mann, ‘fighting tooth and nail to save their planet…. there are a moral authority and clarity in their message that none but the most jaded ears can fail to hear.’ The third point is to ‘educate, educate, educate’. This means deniers have to be informed, correct misinformation and challenge them through educating them. The final point is ‘changing the system requires systemic change.’ The solution of the climate problem lies with policy, with government and international action. This in turn requires mobilization of collective efforts.
Bill Gates also mentioned in his Gate Notes that climate change solutions have to lie at the level of policy. Gates mentioned that we have to ‘revolutionize the world’s physical economy-and that will take, among other things, a dramatic infusion of ingenuity, funding and focus from…government. No one else has the resources to drive the research we need.’ Gates' plan is to ‘expand the supply of innovations and ‘accelerate the demand for innovations’ directed at eliminating carbon emissions to achieve a zero-carbon goal by 2050.
Extreme weather is a growing political problem. We have seen in recent times in Valencia, Spain, Los Angeles and elsewhere that when severe and frequent climate impacts strike, a group of peoples are quick to exploit public anger over a lack of preparation, using it to advance their own agenda and weaken support for climate action more broadly. Hence alongside cutting emissions to net zero, adapting to our warmed climate needs to go hand in hand.
Broadly speaking the options available to humanity are: either by radically switching direction from a growth model to a sustainability model of economic activity or make renewable energy cheap and plentiful, remove and safely store the excess greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere and positively incentivize doing both.
Dr Kanan Purkayastha is a
UK-based academic who
writes on science, philosophy
and education.
