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Japanese
English
Yusuke Yonekura

I would like to convey
my thoughts and enthusiasm to you
FOR YOUR HAPPINESS!!

Specialty: Integrated Research on
Global Environmental Problems

The time we have left

A tragedy with no peer in the human history is just about reaching at a furious pace
—climate change.

 

However, most people are unfamiliar with its tragic impact, and little turn their eyes to it for daily busyness. But this “invisible” threat has tracked down us restlessly while we have been pressed with business or housework
and have not been realized it.

The points that once happened, it triggers an “irreversible change” are called tipping points.
In the ongoing climate change,
if some tipping points were passed, then a subsequent restoring of the climate system would likely not reverse the changes.

In short, we have time limits.

Saying more clearly, the future can change a lot “WHEN WE KICK OFF SERIOUS EFFORTS.”

The sooner we start the “serious efforts,” the bigger results we can achive. Being too late, in contrast, these have little meaning, even if we make desperate efforts.

At present

In the present state of the environmental measures, however, we cannot avoid the tragic irreversible changes, such as melting of Greenland ice sheet and permafrost, collapse of coral reefs and the Amazon rainforest, mass extinction of sea creatures including fishes, ruining countries such as India and China by melting the Himalayan Glaciers.

And the situation will not change, even if only a few people with interests in environmental problems put in effort.

I want you as a “hero or heroine”

Thus, I would like to propose that people with no interest in environmental problems so far would be better off dealing with this situation as one! What do you think?

In order to do so, I consider that all the people living on the globe need to know the present conditions of the Earth and human being exactly at the beginning, and clearly understand the path that we would be better off following.

Meanwhile, I think there are many people who think that, “I’m not interestend in global environmental problems at all, because these have nothing to do with my life!!” But you such people are interested in at least any one of the following lists, aren’t you?

  • My health

  • My job

  • My favorite foods
    (Please imagine these foods)

  • The life of my old age

  • My children’s and grandchildren’s happiness

  • My children’s and grandchildren’s future

  • Education for my children and grandchildren

  • Clean air

  • Divinely luxuriant forests

  • Beautiful ocean and coral reef

 

In fact, all of them are closely related to global environmental problems.

 

I consider that
I would like to pass on these matters to you.

I hope
you feel that global environmental problems are “our own problems,”
you lift your soul,
and
you become a history maker
—“heros and heroines in the 21st century” !!

(7)

"Time Limits"
At present
I want you as a "hero/heroine"
  1. IPCC (2014) Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
     

  2. IPCC (2018) Global Warming of 1.5°C. An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty.
     

  3. E. Rignot, J. Mouginot, M. Morlighem, H. Seroussi, B. Scheuchl (2014) Widespread, rapid grounding line retreat of Pine Island, Thwaites, Smith, and Kohler glaciers, West Antarctica, from 1992 to 2011. Geophysical Research Letters, 3502–3509.
     

  4. Dirk Notz, Julienne Stroeve (2016) Observed Arctic sea-ice loss directly follows anthropogenic CO2 emission. Science, 354, 747–750.
     

  5. Alexander Robinson, Reinhard Calov, Andrey Ganopolski (2012) Multistability and critical thresholds of the Greenland ice sheet. Nature Climate Change, 2, 429–432.
     

  6. Timothy M. Lenton, Hermann Held, Elmar Kriegler, Jim W. Hall, Wolfgang Lucht, Stefan Rahmstorf, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber (2008) Tipping elements in the Earth's climate system. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 105, 1786–1793.
     

  7. Philippus Wester, Arabinda Mishra, Aditi Mukherji, Arun Bhakta Shrestha (2019) The Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment: Mountains, Climate Change, Sustainability and People. Springer.

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