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Climate Crisis at Boiling Point - Poster of the Week



"Wir Bringen Die Pole Zum Schmelzen"

Klaus Staeck

Greenpeace, Steidl Göttingen

Offset, 1988

Heidelberg, Germany

13147


Poster Text: We Bring the Poles to the Melting Point—Most

Catastrophically


The record-breaking temperatures across the U.S., Europe, and Asia this

week are finally making headlines. In the U.S., more than 100 million people

are under heat alerts (30% of the nation); in the UK, some routine hospital

operations were stopped due to record-shattering heat disrupting energy

resources; over 64% of China’s population is experiencing extreme heat

that is detrimentally affecting energy supplies and agriculture already

overwhelmed by severe flooding and landslides; wildfires are ravaging

regions of Spain and Portugal; and over 2,000 people have already died due

to current heat wave conditions in Europe alone.


The heat dome sizzling large swaths of the globe has been a reminder

amidst the distraction of other urgent political chaos that this climate crisis is

the global battle of our lifetime. Extreme heat and drought affect the

unhoused, the elderly, agriculture and livestock, pets and wildlife as entire

ecosystems and agricultural systems become unable to support life. Earlier

this year, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report

revealed that if Earth warms just another nine-tenths of a degree Celsius,

land burned by wildfires globally will increase by 35%. The impact this will

have on world hunger is unconscionable; already a drought in the Horn of

Africa has left over 20 million people without food. And with 4 corporations

controlling 90% of global grain trade, the poorer (and exploited) nations of

the Global South are the first to bear the repercussions, despite emitting the

least amount of carbon emissions.


It is no longer just the future of younger generations being stolen by the rich,

it is the present too. We must stop using future tense when referring to

natural disasters, refugee migration, starvation and death rates – the

emergency is HERE.



References:









Resources:




(for UK citizens)





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