Introduction

Introduction to Climate Change

The critical issue of climate change resulted from the shift in the balance of the world’s
environmental system. Our planet can be compared to a garden; and as any garden, when the
balance shifts, it creates an issue in the ability of the garden to survive. The shift in our garden
occurred due to changes from the Second World War. The Second World War resulted in
massive changes in how the means of production were utilized as massive factories were built to
fight the war.

After the war, these factories shifted from producing weapons to producing ordinary
products for purchase by regular consumers. In the 1960s, the invention of the ocean container
expanded global trade and enabled massive factories to be built in Asia (Levinson, 2016). Over
time, an augmented increase in production devastated the worldwide environment because
millions of people, who believed that owning a car, cell phone and other products would make
them happy and desired to have more items, purchased billions of products that utilized or
generated greenhouse gases damaging to the environment.

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Although many people blame industrialization for the greenhouse gases issues, greed and
people’s desire to have an excess of items at lower costs have created these issues (Patel, 2009).
Instead of purchasing quality products designed to last for an extended time, consumers purchase
fast fashion and less expensive, low-quality products, which due to their shorter product life, are
disposed of frequently and contribute to waste buildup in the environment. As consumers are
constantly purchasing new items, more fossil fuels and unsustainable resources must be
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expended to manufacture and transport these items. The world population must move past these
trends, but doing so means shifting from capitalism, or communism, and consumerism to a new
political model--one exemplified by the shared economy, which could be coined “Shareology.”
Through a Capitalist economy in which a higher amount of resources and products are shared, a
lower amount of resources will be utilized and wasted, thereby reducing greenhouse gas
production (Kramer, 2015).

From the perspective of leading scientists, greenhouse gases are having a major impact
on global climate change, and to address the impacts, we must identify a key way to effect
change within the upcoming 12 years. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change does not believe it is possible to limit global warming to 1.5 Celsius without removing
between “100 billion and a trillion metric tons of carbon dioxide by the end of the century,”
which would necessitate reversing almost 3 decades of worldwide emissions (Temple, 2019).