Infographic: “What Have We Done About Global Warming?”

The information in this infographic is derived from Nathanial Rich’s book on the history of the politics of climate change, Losing Earth and PBS’s Timeline: The Politics of Climate Change

Studying the politics of climate change and the international community’s efforts to make headway in addressing this momentous problem leads to the troubling question: will people ever make the deep changes necessary to avert catastrophic destruction of human and animal life?

The scientific community reached consensus about climate change in the late 1970’s. Not much has changed about their conclusions. Profound problems come with increased counts of Carbon Dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere. Climatologists began measuring Carbon Dioxide in the late 1950’s and heating became statistically apparent in the 1980’s. Both the CO2 counts and the warming have ramped up steadily ever since. No end to the trend, which will not correct itself, is in view.

Sadly, making the changes necessary to head off the worst potential of a heating planet would damage several industries, notably the fossil fuel companies. Their efforts to stave off regulation and transition to clean energy has its own history, which threads through the last half century.

These graphics contain much detail, which can only become legible when the links are clicked and high resolution versions of the charts are viewed or downloaded.

For a downloadable detailed version of the whole infographic above click here.

For a downloadable detailed version of the 1960 to 1990 section of the infographic click here.

For a downloadable detailed version of the 1990 to 2020 section of the infographic click here.

For a downloadable detailed version of the cluster of activity around 1980 click here.

For a downloadable detailed version of the cluster of activity around 2010 click here.

The BBC short history of climate change.