This article reports findings from the UN Environment Programme which recently found that cutting atmospheric soot, ground-level ozone, and methane will mitigate the negative consequences of global warming anywhere from 30-60 years. If drastic cuts in these emissions are made worldwide, it is estimated that humanity can shave one half of a degree from temperature worldwide, hopefully saving billions of dollars worth of agriculture and countless human lives lost due to air pollution.
While this article does not embody a single effective response to global warming, or any other particular environmental challenge, it does bring to the forefront of consciousness an issue that is rarely thought about by humans: the fact that we don't know what we don't know. Just as we seem to be discovering, daily, the negative effects of global warming, we also find that mitigation we did not earlier know possible also exists. My point in using this article is to perhaps provide the most hopeful facet of existence: that in a future which seems foreboding, uncertain, and hostile humanity can retain its intelligence, ingenuity, and cleverness. We, as a species, cannot lose hope for ourselves because of our preceding generations - we must boldly understand our condition and environment, our circumstance and ourselves and lead our species (not country or even society) toward a more promising future. I think this article brings this other face of what seems like a hopeless eclipse into view, and to lose that hope, that view of the future as up-for-grabs, as a Heideggerian Open, would be our greatest failure.
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