Impacts of climate change on humanity: it is worse than you think, but still fixable.

Keynote presentation

Authors

  • Camilo Mora University of Hawaii Manoa

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14288/hfjc.v14i3.375

Abstract

Summary of Keynote Address: Dr. Camilo Mora’s keynote address was designed to address the impacts of climate change on humanity and the solutions that his team has created. Dr. Mora emphasized how through approximately 20 years of research on these different topics he has discovered the enormous and alarming impact(s) of climate change on nature and humanity. He also articulated his concerns about our ability to deal with climate change. He highlighted the diverse (at least 27) ways that you can die from during a heatwave. He equated how this was like a horror movie with 27 endings to choose from. Dr. Mora discussed how the evaluation of 12,000 papers revealed that there are more than 400 ways that climate change can harm humanity. He argued how there will be no place to hide from climate change and it is likely to get worse. Dr. Mora’s daughter, Asryelle,​ then discussed potential solutions that they have explored to address the impacts of climate change, such as the Carbon​ Neutrality​ Challenge (www.GoCarbonNeutral.org). The premise is to calculate how much carbon dioxide each person generates, estimate the number of trees necessary to sequester those emissions, plant the trees, and then climate change solve. At any moment, a person will know how many trees to plant and/or how much they would have to reduce consumption to reach neutrality. Asryelle discussed the various community-based approaches to addressing climate change including an initiative wherein 20 teams were able to plant 1,100 trees in two hours. Asryelle also highlighted how they created a webpage called “The Planting World Records” to incentivize this project, which allowed teams of no more than 20 people to compete in planting the most trees in six hours. Asryelle emphasized the various opportunities and challenges associated with addressing climate change. She stressed how the average person would need to plant 130 trees to be carbon neutral across the lifespan, which equates to one trillion trees across the world. Asryelle concluded by emphasizing that we know the problem and the solution and therefore there is no excuse for not addressing climate change.

Published

2021-09-30

How to Cite

Mora, C. (2021). Impacts of climate change on humanity: it is worse than you think, but still fixable.: Keynote presentation. The Health & Fitness Journal of Canada, 14(3). https://doi.org/10.14288/hfjc.v14i3.375