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Why are we moving towards a more sustainable lifestyle?
The Climate Workout helps us prepare for a sustainable way of living, because our current lifestyle needs to change. This need comes from a phenomenon called climate change. In short, climate change is about human activity increasing the intensity of the greenhouse effect that warms the atmosphere. The amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is increasing all the time due to rising carbon dioxide emissions, which primarily come from burning fossil fuels, such as oil, coal and gas. At the same time, carbon sinks and reservoirs that sequester emissions are diminishing, which will further accelerate the increase of greenhouse gases.
The more greenhouse gases – such as carbon dioxide and water vapour – build up in the atmosphere, the warmer the average global temperature will get. A temperature increase of just a few degrees will already result in glaciers melting, oceans warming up, extreme weather phenomena becoming more common, and so on. The average temperature has already increased by more than one degree Celsius, and the consequences can be seen all over the world.
Information on the subject has been available for a long time. People were aware of the warming effect of greenhouse gases on the atmosphere already in the 19th century. Scientists studying the subject at the time included at least the Frenchman Joseph Fourier, the American Eunice Foote, the Irishman John Tyndall and the Swede Svante Arrhenius.
Despite warnings from the scientific community, political measures have not been sufficient in halting the growth of emissions in time, and reaching a climate agreement between different countries has taken a long time. We all need to do our part in demanding action to drastically reduce emissions.