Climate chaos: planetary dangers and humanitarian emergency

Human activities such as deforestation, forest fires, mining, industrialized agriculture, the burning of fossil fuels (petroleum, natural gas, coal), and wars have been threatening nature, civilization, and humans. Those threats weaponize the planet's temperature. Scientists describe that effect as climate change/climate chaos.

Climate change/chaos is global and anthropogenic/artificial. It has been affecting the lives of billions of people and the planet's survival. Pope Francis was angry with the failing international political system, which is at the expense of humanity and Mother Earth. In his October 4, 2023, encyclical, Laudate Deum / Praise God, he said: "I have realized that our responses [to climate crisis] have not been adequate, while the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point."

This realization highlights the immense humanitarian dimensions of climate chaos. They are gigantic. All people in the world are potential victims and humanitarians, both separately and simultaneously. In both difficult times and times of peace, humans are humanitarians, that is, instinctively feel solidarity with suffering fellow humans. Sympathy, solidarity, cooperation, and mutual assistance increase in times of common and national threats and dangers.

The burning of fossil fuels in the US is responsible for about 74 percent of the country's warming. The burning of petroleum, for instance, releases gases like carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4). These gases grab chunks of solar energy, which they eventually release. This additional energy/heat slowly increases global temperature. It becomes a warm coat around the planet.

Human intervention in the natural world has increased considerably since the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. The 20th century spread the industrialization model to most countries. WWI, 1914-1918, and WWII, 1939-1945, added vast amounts of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Then, the Cold War/militarization of international relations, 1945-1989, increased global climate pollution. And since the 1970s, one of the largest and most populous countries in the world, China, has entered the age of industrialization, mechanizing its economy, industry, agriculture, and armed forces, considerably boosting the planet's greenhouse burden. In the 21st century, China is "the world's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, produc[ing] 12.7 billion metric tons of emissions annually. That dwarfs U.S. emissions, currently [in 2024] about 5.9 billion tons annually." In general, China is the largest climate polluter, and the US is the second-largest.

This means global temperatures keep increasing, with foreseeable and unforeseeable adverse effects: storms, forest fires, city fires, hurricanes, bomb rains, flooding, heatwaves on land and at sea, drought, the potential melting of ice in Greenland and Antarctica, and the thawing of permafrost in Alaska and Siberia. These real and potential disasters significantly magnify the need for humanitarian assistance.

Climate chaos

Every human-caused natural phenomenon is a symptom of planetary warming. They have been causing upheavals in the natural world and human societies. Forest fires, for example, are catastrophic for countless animal and plant species living in the forest. Such ecosystem damage disrupts fresh drinking water supplies and affects the survival of endangered species, leading to their extinction. Burnt trees also release the carbon dioxide they had absorbed from the atmosphere, thereby increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide and, in turn, the planet's temperature.

Forest fires sometimes spill over into nearby cities, with dramatic and often catastrophic effects. In January 2025, fires burned towns in southern California, such as Altadena, and neighborhoods in the Los Angeles megalopolis. The temptation to rebuild is enormous. However, burnt towns become toxic, with heavy metal contamination threatening human health.

The melting of Arctic sea ice is threatening the survival of polar bears, for example. And the continued melting of ice in Antarctica and Greenland threatens islands like Tuvalu in the Pacific Ocean. This is a humanitarian and philosophical issue of the highest order. Do humans have the right to continue with activities (the burning of fossil fuels) that endanger the survival of other humans, in this case, the survival of nations and countries like Tuvalu? I don't think so. Continuing with the fossil fuels becomes an undeclared war, in which case we need to ask, why kill the people of Tuvalu? Isn't such killing genocidal? What did they do to become our enemies? And also, Tuvaluans have had a minor impact on the world's temperature compared to people in industrialized countries like the US. As humans living in North America and Europe, China, Russia, and the Middle East, don't we have the moral and political responsibility to protect them from our own actions? Humanitarianism becomes or should become the highest virtue.

Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty

Wars over oil continue. Their effects are global and, in combination with climate change, which they fuel, are threatening to increase the screaming dead to billions.