It pains me to say this, but we have known about Climate Change since 1940! No joke. For over 80 years the people at power actively or unwillingly ignored the scientists' voices of concern. When your Grandmother was born, we already knew this was going to happen. Back then it was called "Climate Change", as it was coined by the first scientist in a newspaper article.
In the 1980s, Al Gore changed the term to Climate Crisis and it became official in 2004 when the Climate Crisis Coalition was formed. Al Gore's activism is well known in the West, yet the forces of the times did not take him, nor the scientist who backed his claims, seriously.
The reasons are many. There is a huge debate on the real reasons why the distraught and quite aggressive activism of the Climate Scientists of the time didn't gain momentum. Some reasons include:
the (very valid!) fear of politicians of creating chaos that would disrupt the fragile economy;
the very difficult language used by the Climate Scientists when making public claims;
the momentum of big corporations whose goals of constant economic growth didn't include the influence on the planet;
a lack of perspective on how one decision can impact the world;
the lack of action of local and state governments to regulate economic growth, either due to corruption or a lack of understanding of science;
the lack of public awareness of the actual solutions;
a lack of access to and very few eco-friendly alternatives available;
the negative effects weren't visible or didn't feel imminent enough. And the list can go on and on. Whatever reasons we had back then, important information has been ignored, willingly or not, bad decisions have been taken and many mistakes have been made.
But today, the term "Climate Crisis" (and not "Change") and the entire concept behind it, is now widely accepted worldwide. The United Nations even call it "Climate Crisis - A Race we Can Win!"
What's more important is the fact that, compared to 80, 60, 40 years ago, we have no more excuses today. Whatever valid excuses we had then don't hold now. Globalization and the internet have raised plenty of awareness. The time to act has come.
So why is it called a "Crisis", and not just Change any more? Because, while 80 years ago the fear (and the science showed that) the climate was changing for the worse, and the goals were to "prevent" the climate from changing even more than that, and to slow down the rate of pollution and overall influence on the planet.
However, we have unfortunately crossed the threshold of "prevention of climate change" to what we, in the industry call, "adaptation to climate change". Though we still have to do both, we are no longer in the position of preventing the irreversible change of our climate, but preventing it from becoming more serious.
We have changed the climate so much that now we can very clearly see the damage caused and we have now shifted to the stage of being in - and dealing with - crisis.
We can now even see it with our own eyes - horrendous forest fires, more violent hurricanes, record breaking floods etc.
As Greta Thunberg boldly stated "It is time we panicked!"
Is panic bad, like the governments have assumed for decades? Let's find out.