Article of the week
Why this article
This week we are offering final year students who are studying the last theme of the year, on the environment, an article taken from the special issue of International mail entitled “Climate. Living differently…, on newsstands since May 20.
For this investigation from the Australian daily The Age, journalist Benjamin Preiss went to the hamlet of Walpeup, where temperatures reached 48.9°C, to understand the effects of this heatwave on the daily lives of the inhabitants.
This subject, as well as a number of articles in the special issue “Climate. Living differently… can be a solid working basis for students who wish to construct a major oral subject on the theme of the geopolitical issues of climate change.
If we only had to remember one quote
“Not only [Walpeup] is the hottest place in the region, but it is also the hottest spot on the entire planet – although, an hour earlier, the small town of Renmark, in southern Australia, had stood out with a thermometer reading 49.6°C.â€
Since the pre-industrial era, the global average temperature has increased by approximately 1.2°C. The Paris agreement in 2015 set the objective of limiting this warming to 1.5°C, or even 2°C. However, according to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), current trajectories lead us towards warming of between 2.5°C and 4°C by the end of the century.
The consequences of this warming are already multiple: rise in sea levels, increase in extreme weather events, acidification of the oceans, retreat of glaciers and sea ice and disruption of ecosystems.
Heatwaves are one of the deadliest manifestations of climate change. In Europe, the heatwave of 2003 caused the death of more than 70,000 people, including 15,000 in France alone.
In South Asia, temperatures exceeding 50°C were recorded in India and Pakistan, making certain areas temporarily uninhabitable for the most vulnerable populations.
Beyond the human toll, heatwaves have significant geopolitical repercussions. Thus, the most precarious populations are also the most exposed: without access to air conditioning, without insurance, they bear the full brunt of the effects of extreme heat. This reality raises major issues of climate justice, particularly between countries in the North, historically responsible for emissions, and countries in the South, which suffer the consequences most heavily.
Climate change is now recognized as a “threat multiplier” by numerous international organizations. Regions like the Sahel, the Horn of Africa and South Asia are already experiencing tensions amplified by the scarcity of water resources and the degradation of agricultural land.
In the hamlet of Walpeup, at the heart of this article in the Australian newspaper, the heatwave is already making any outdoor work impossible. The journalist describes an oppressive and dangerous heat: burning ground, dry mouth, body temperature rising, forcing people to urgently move to an air-conditioned space. Faced with climate change which increases the probability Even more severe and more regular heatwave episodes, global inequalities will be further exacerbated at all scales.
To go further
To delve deeper into the subject of the consequences of heatwaves on the daily lives of populations, we offer the following links.
And what you shouldn’t miss this week either
Final year students studying the theme of memoirs could read this article which shows how Paris is currently extending its hands towards Algiers in an attempt to calm conflicting relations since the end of the Algerian war.
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