Throughout this course we have covered a variety of technological fixes regarding the many issues of industrialization, and how we conceive of short term solvents that generally miss the root of the issue; this concept is most stark in the area of global warming, where on the most massive scale the effects of human development can be seen. Some report that we cannot escape the crisis we are in without completely renovating our system of energy by removing our reliance on coal, which is a clear impossibility for the time being further illustrating how challenging this problem is to overcome. At predicted levels of warming (between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius) the Earth will experience massive loss of biodiversity and extreme fluctuations in the ocean levels, further damaging coastal ecological regions; marine life will suffer greatly from these shifts. As far as solutions go, we as a society must entirely shift our energy sources and carbon emissions, as wel as methane production in agriculture. On a practical level, recycling and energy conservation are old first steps.
Many believe the Earth experiences natural overall temperature shifts over large scales of time, and that the current level of warmth we are experiencing is simply a part of the natural movement of our planet and the sun. This is not true however, as background rates are no where near the change we observe today. Caution and skepticism are healthy in our absorption of scientific information, but in the realm of climate change, it is clear that anthropogenic causes underly the issues we are seeing today.