When we talk about climate change and global warming, we inevitably reach the “two degree target” formulated by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This threshold represents the threshold for climate change “risk” – even if permanent changes occur as Earth’s surface warming decreases. This reference value resulted from scientific investigations. But to be able to understand the scale of climate change at all, one must also consult other disciplines, Indian historian Depesh Chakrabarti emphasizes in his book Climate of History in the Age of Planets.
The author concludes that we need to look at our time from two different perspectives: the planet and the world. The latter looks at the world from a human perspective, while the planet describes phenomena separate from humans. As abstract and complex as this approach may seem, the historian has conveyed the different points of view in an impressive manner.
Sometimes the opposite approach
In more than 400 pages, it draws on historical, social, scientific, and philosophical ideas. Chakrabarti impressively brings together the insights and considerations of different people and articulates different and sometimes contradictory approaches to the disciplines. Considering humans under the blanket term species is quite straightforward for biologists, but not for philosophy and/or the humanities.
The author also deals with issues of equity, because most emissions came from Western industrialized countries, but they still affect everyone. Chakrabarti illustrates this dilemma with an example of air conditioning ownership in the United States and India. Although Delhi average temperatures will exceed 35°C 75 days a year by the end of the century, putting enormous pressure on the population, only about 5 percent of Indian homes have air conditioning, compared to 87 percent in India. United State.
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