The students were lucky enough to meet with Johan Rockstrom along with a team of other scientists. Johan and team have corroborated extensive natural feedback processes and many of them can serve as “tipping elements.” Nature is known to have feedback mechanisms, such as the rainforest’s ability to create its own humidity and rain. This successfully keeps the ecosystem in equilibrium. Rockstrom says, if the rainforest is subjected to an intense increase in warming and deforestation, the feedback mechanism will slowly get weaker.

When the tipping point is crossed the feedback mechanism changes direction. The rainforest will eventually morph from a moisture engine into a self-dryer. Soon enough the rainforest will change into a savanna and in the process, it will release carbon. This is the tipping point that will begin a series of climatic disasters such as El Nino events, forest fires, loss of coral reefs, Arctic summer sea ice.

To ensure that we stay away from the tipping point, a global call to stop carbon emissions should be initiated. The whole world must adopt major projects to become sustainable across all sectors. While teaching on climate change in secondary education, students should also be educated on creating investment funds that can support poorer nations that don’t have as much capacity to reduce carbon emissions as the richer countries do.

Every 100,000 years, the earth has always naturally cycled in and out of an ice age. According to research, the planet progressively left the last ice age around 12,000 years ago. Currently, Earth is in an interglacial cycle known as the Holocene epoch. The Holocene epoch began just as the Earth entered a warming trend. The glaciers retreated and the climate gave way to the growth of extensive forests. As the climate changed, the very large mammals that had adapted to extremely cold weather, like mammoths and wooly rhinoceros eventually became extinct.

In the Holocene epoch the Earth has adopted natural systems that help keep the Earth’s surface cool, even during the hotter interglacial periods. Many scientists, however, state that because of the immense pressure and impact of humans on the environment, the Earth’s climatic temperatures are nearly as hot as the maximum historical temperature during an interglacial cycle.

Today industrial activities that require the burning of fossil fuels along with thousands of other human activities emit 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year. Roughly, half of the missions are taken up and stored by the oceans, trees, plants, and soil. However, humans are now pushing the system to the limit by occasionally cutting down trees, degrading too much soil, wasting a lot of fresh water and continuously emitting large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Soon enough with continued pressure to the earth’s system. Forests, soil, and water will begin to release the carbon dioxide that they have been storing. Scientists fear that if carbon emissions continue and humans continue to apply pressure to the system the planet will leave the glacial-interglacial cycle and will become a self-heater. The Earth will be thrust into a new age of the “hothouse Earth.”

In our natural world, there are a large number of people who still do not pay attention or care about the world’s current climatic catastrophe and species extinction. This has actually led to a rise in the number of students who have chosen to start a movement encouraging leaders, industries, and citizens from all over the world to prioritize on caring for the environment.

At this pivotal time for our species and the earth, the climate change secondary education students are determined to inform the world about threats, consequences and different solutions that we should adopt to save the planet. In this article, we will go through some of the different reasons why students are getting involved and how these students are making a difference globally.