Climate change: what are the causes?

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Earth’s climate has been changing since it formed 4.5 billion years ago, but until recently this was only caused by natural factors.

These include volcanic eruptions, changes in the Earth’s orbit (known as Milankovitch cycles), patterns in changing water temperatures in the Pacific Ocean (known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation), changing energy from the sun (known as solar irradiance), and shifts in the Earth’s crust (known as plate tectonics).

Our climate is made up of a collection of delicately interconnected processes designed to distribute the sun’s energy more evenly across the globe. Because there is generally more heat near the equator than at the poles due to the tilt of the Earth’s axis, the climate system moves heat from the equator to the poles using the atmosphere and the oceans.

But human activity since the Industrial Revolution has disturbed this balance. Below we explore the headlines in the human causes of climate change.

The birth of industry

The beginning of human-caused climate change has been attributed to the Industrial Revolution, which started in Britain in the 18th century. The Industrial Revolution fundamentally transformed society, in part by introducing new technologies.

These include the use of new basic materials such as iron and steel; the use of new energy sources, such as coal, the steam engine, electricity, petroleum, and the internal-combustion engine; and developments in transportation and communication, including the steam locomotive, steamship, automobile, airplane, telegraph, and radio.

New nonindustrial developments also included changes to agriculture that allowed food to be provided for a larger population who themselves did not work in agriculture, and the growth of cities.

Britain’s economy was changed from a collection of “cottage industries” to a “large-scale, labour intensive factory system”.

Research suggests that global warming began as a result of these changes as early as the 1830s, but the scientific community had not yet developed a sufficient awareness of the climate to understand the risks of these new industrial activities.

Many societies have become dependent to some degree on environmentally harmful technologies introduced during the Industrial Revolution. Examples on an individual scale include the usage of road vehicles and electricity, but this also includes structural processes.

One example is our large-scale industrialised agricultural system that uses synthetic fertilisers, chemical pesticides, and high-yield cereal hybrids, which, as the UN Environmental Programme explains, comes at a high environmental cost.

This is just one example of how mass-industrialisation and industrial processes still underlie the human causes of climate change today, however many of the environmentally harmful processes we use today, which we will now explore, are also related to industrialisation.

Human causes of climate change today

Humans activities have been the primary driver of recent climate change, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Of these activities, our use of coal, oil, and gas (known as fossil fuels) is reported to be “by far the largest contributor” to global climate change, with over 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions caused by fossil fuel use.

According to the Met Office, a certain amount of natural greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is required for us to survive. Without these gases – carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, water vapour, and others – they say Earth would be about 30 degrees colder than it is today.

But human processes have released more of these gases into the atmosphere than would naturally occur, meaning that more heat has been trapped than usual. Where the Earth would normally be kept at a warm, stable temperature, these processes have caused the planet to heat at a much faster rate.

“The world is now warming faster than at any point in recorded history. Warmer temperatures over time are changing weather patterns and disrupting the usual balance of nature,” state the UN.

The human activities that cause climate change, as listed by the UN, are:

• Generating power using fossil fuels (coal, oil, and gas)
• Manufacturing goods using fossil fuels, either through burning them for energy or using the chemicals within them, for example plastics can be made from coal and crude oil. Associated processes to manufacturing also release greenhouse gases, for example mining and construction
• Cutting down forests. Carbon is stored in trees, which makes the effect of cutting them down two-fold: it releases carbon into the atmosphere and means that those trees cannot continue absorbing carbon dioxide, which would have helped to keep future emissions out of the atmosphere
• Using transportation that runs on fossil fuels
• Producing food in ways that cause greenhouse gas emissions, such as causing deforestation and clearing land for agriculture and grazing, production and use of fertilisers and manure for growing crops, using energy to run farm equipment, and packaging and distributing food. Digestion by cows and sheep also produces greenhouse gas
• Powering buildings with fossil fuels. This includes heating and cooling buildings and using electricity
• Consuming too much in our individual lifestyles, particularly the most wealthy. Private homes, use of power, transport, diet, and waste produced all contribute to our global greenhouse gas emissions

Looking deeper into climate change causes

The role of corporations

In 2013, the “carbon accountant” Richard Heede identified 90 companies and government-run industries that were responsible for nearly two thirds of human-caused carbon emissions.

Heede explains his perspective on corporate responsibility: “I as a consumer bear some responsibility for my own car, etcetera. But we’re living an illusion if we think we’re making choices, because the infrastructure pretty much makes those choices for us."

Corporations have also caused environmental harm in other ways, such as by dumping toxic waste into rivers, causing deadly air pollution, cutting down tropical rainforests, and evicting communities to make way for industry projects.

These are some of the direct harms that corporations have had on the environment. But another piece of the puzzle comes in the form of the indirect impact of the fossil-fuel industry.

The fossil fuel industry engaged in a disinformation campaign from the 1980s to sow doubt about climate change – despite knowing about the risks of their activities. They also lobbied lawmakers to block clean energy legislation and climate treaties throughout the 1990s, and funded think tanks and biased studies.

These activities have had a long-term impact on opinion and policy surrounding the climate.

Today, oil companies generally shy away from denying climate science outright but some of them continue to fight efforts to tackle climate change in policy while engaging in greenwashing to mystify their actions.

The industries that are currently emitting the most greenhouse gas emissions are energy, transport, manufacturing and construction, agriculture, food retail, fashion, and technology.

The phenomenon of greenwashing has arisen across many industries in recent years. Greenwashing is when a company tries to “make people believe that [it is] doing more to protect the environment than it really is”.

This can be confusing to consumers and cause them to spend their money in environmentally damaging ways without their knowledge. As awareness around this grows, however, companies are increasingly being challenged to live up to their green claims.

Global witness argues that rather than relying on consumers to research the green credentials of every potential purchase, regulation is the answer to ensuring that corporations take responsibility for their actions, calling for “mandatory due diligence”.

The action and inaction of governments

Governments have a role to play in tackling climate change as they have a certain amount of power over the economy and society of their respective countries and can set climate policies to tackle climate change on a national and international scale.

Representatives of governments attend annual Conference of the Parties (COP) summits to review progress towards the overall goal of limiting climate change. All governments have to navigate different contexts with different tools and different levels of power on the global stage.

Giving an idea of the success of governments in tackling climate change, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres has said: “We are witnessing a historic and dangerous disconnect: science and citizens are demanding ambitious and transformative climate action…Meanwhile many governments are dragging their feet. This inaction has grave consequences.”

The Economist has identified a range of reasons for government inaction over the years. These include the lack of power of the UN to “tell their member countries what to do”, the lack of a shared sense of urgency among member countries, and the economic interests for industrialised countries to continue polluting activities.

The disinformation campaign conducted by fossil fuel companies (discussed above) is also identified as a cause of political inaction. Oliver Morton, briefings editor at the economist, says, “it played into a growing polarisation in politics”.

Other reasons identified for government inaction is the belief that it is “for someone else to do”, the prevalence of compromise within international agreements, and a mismatch between ambitious long-term goals and insufficient short-term actions.

Overpopulation or overconsumption?

There has been a widespread belief that overpopulation is a key cause of climate change. The narrative is now shifting, however, with emphasis placed on the issue of overconsumption. The crux of the matter is that not every person who is born causes an equal level of harm to the environment.

The UN explains that high-income and upper-middle-income countries contribute disproportionately to global emissions of carbon dioxide (85%).

Crucially, they state that emissions have increased regardless of population increase – and emissions have even continued to grow when population numbers have decreased.

In addition, The Union of Concerned Scientists argue that a focus on overpopulation misplaces the blame upon those who are already marginalised and who are the least responsible for climate change.

Annabel Sowemimo, a community sexual and reproductive health doctor, also explains that the ‘overpopulation’ narrative poses risks to reproductive rights, and that the argument has violent and racist roots and implications today.

Instead, the issue of overconsumption is now being emphasised to push for more fundamental, transformative change.

The UN states: “Instead of looking for solutions in demographic trends, achieving sustainability will depend critically on humanity’s capacity and willingness to increase resource efficiency in consumption and production and to decouple economic growth from damage to the environment.

High-income and upper-middle-income countries should acknowledge their disproportionate contributions to global environmental damage and take the lead in building a more sustainable economic system for the benefit of future generations.”

The international not-for-profit Friends of the Earth state that the root cause of overconsumption is “a systemic obsession with growth”.

They write: “Our current system seeks continuous growth, and crashes without it. It feeds on endless profit, extraction, production and consumption, all resulting in more excretion, environmental destruction and inequality…We need a fundamental reset of the economy and to leave behind this growth obsession”.

Anthropocentrism

Anthropocentrism (literally meaning “human-centered”) is a “philosophical viewpoint arguing that human beings are the central or most significant entities in the world. This is a basic belief embedded in many religions and philosophies”, from Judeo-Christian theology to the philosophy of Aristotle and Immanuel Kant.

“Anthropocentrism regards humans as separate from and superior to nature and holds that human life has intrinsic value while other entities (including animals, plants, mineral resources, and so on) are resources that may be justifiably exploited for the benefit of humankind.”

Researchers of the philosophy have explained: “Anthropocentrism is clearly a significant driver of ecocide and the environmental crisis, for society has been madly pursuing project ‘human planet’ without considering that humanity is (in the end) fully dependent on nature…Anthropocentrism cannot lead us to a sustainable future.”

“Ecocentrism, in contrast, accepts that we are part of nature, and have a responsibility to respect the web of life and heal the damage caused by the ideological dominance of anthropocentrism”.

Taking these ideas further, ecofeminists also argue that the anthropocentric philosophy is a patriarchal worldview: “to view nature as inferior to humanity is [comparable] to viewing other people (women, colonial subjects, non-white populations) as inferior to white Western men, and, as with nature, provides moral justification for their exploitation”.

What’s in your power?

Everyone has different degrees and types of power to create change. By understanding the causes of climate change, we have the context to help tackle it effectively from where we each stand.