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Climate Change: Tragedy vs. disaster
A disaster, whether earthquake, typhoon, or fire, is often localized in geographical terms. While human deaths in a disaster can reach up to thousands and more and more disasters can be attributed to climate changes, they are still a small percentage of the population of the world and the event is forgotten and assigned to history after a few days. On the other hand, a tragedy in terms of the subject of this article is by definition preventable and occurs in the predictable future. For example, the rise of sea level due to global warming and melting ice will affect people world wide but the effect is slowly developing. For example the latest warning from the United Nation climate change report predicts that the world will reach a tipping point of no return and worldwide collapse in 12-14 years. Unfortunately, people as a group are very shortsighted. We care much more for immediate gains and are often unwilling to shoulder sacrifices for longer term benefits. Thus, even if wise leaders wish to implement reform, they gets voted out of office never mind the difficult task of persuading all the countries of the world to cooperate in action (The President of European Union Mr. Juncker famously said "we know what needs to be done but we don't know what to do to get re-lected after we have done it) . The US has already pulled out of the Paris Accord on Climate Change agreed on a few years back. We are looking at a TRAGEDY developing slowly but surely for most of us in decades time. It is still preventable but do we as a species can muster the will/sacrifice to do it?
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