Human culture, climate change and developing countries

HUMAN culture is largely dependent on climate while the advancement of human civilisation also influences the features of the climate. This evolution has been going on since time immemorial. Most of the climate studies revealed that before the pre-Industrial era the warming or cooling process of the earth had long been organised at a very slow pace. Accordingly, scores of years had been passed before the climate centric changes in human civilisation became visible. That is why climate awareness has not been developed as an essentially relevant issue in our socio-economic decision making process. But, over the last few decades, adverse effects of climate change have become a source of concern for researchers. Scientists consider global warming as one of the major determining factors of recent climate change. A research of the University of Massachusetts and the University of Arizona reveals that during the last millennium, global temperatures dropped by an average of .02 degrees Celsius per century. Conversely, the World Meteorological Organisation’s ‘Global Climate Statement 2021’ shows that the average temperature in 2020 was about 1.1 degrees Celsius higher than the average temperature between 1850 and 1900. Because of the widespread use of fossil fuels in post-industrial mechanical civilisation, the growth of greenhouse gases has accelerated in the atmosphere. Thus, the earth’s internal temperature is rising rapidly. The ‘Global Climate Statement-2020’ supports the claim by these scientists. The report shows that the average amount of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere in 2020 was 413ppm, ie among every million particles in the atmosphere, 413 particles are carbon, which is about 150 per cent of the pre-industrial period. The report considers global worming as the outcome of aggressive human activities. A United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, titled ‘Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis’, also identifies human activities as one of the scientifically established causes of ongoing global warming. In this context, global leaders attending at the Glasgow Climate Conference acknowledged the responsibility of human actions for the rapid global warming and emphasised the restructuring of the human culture and development philosophy since global warming is already creating threats to the ecosystems. The unavoidable result of warming is the melting of ice sheets in Greenland, Antarctica and the Himalayas that lead on the sea level raise.