Climate Change Impact on Society
Climate change certainly has an impact on humans. The impact also varies from an environment, economy to socio-culture, or even knowledge. If you want to see climate change, it can be seen by qualitatively or quantitatively. If qualitative, look at changes in climate patterns synthetically and historically to describe climate change in the future. Then, if the quantitative method, looking at the complex categorization between humans and the environment, then the current climate model capabilities can be used to predict climate change, even though it has limitations on a scale.
Scott, et.al (1990), climate change in several studies do not focus on the impact of climate prediction, but on the cause is the increasing amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere.
Furthermore, there are several important issues discussed in climate change, namely:
[1] time, which sees humans responding to climate change that refers to the current climate, and the use of technology that changes every time.
[2] resource stimulation, that there are methods that can stimulate interaction between humans and resources, in accordance with external indicators such as technological change and population growth.
[3] Geographic integration, this occurs because of human interaction between regions, such as international trade and market response to human migration, so this awareness is needed in seeing the potential of each region in relation to competition.
[4] uncertainty, this is due to uncertain climate changes, such as temperature, wind speed, rainfall and so on, so this will have an impact on uncertain economic and population growth in the future.
For examples, climate change has an impact on humans that occur in several sectors such as energy, agriculture, water resources, forest ecosystems, water quality, fisheries, infrastructure, health (Scott, et.al, 1990). The issue of climate change has become a concern for humans, as we know that these changes are caused by excess greenhouse gas emissions.
According to Henderson (2017), climate change has risks for humans, for example in terms of business, namely in the process of adaptation of industries and businesses that oppose government policies related to emissions — social cost of carbon — to estimate the costs to be incurred by the industry on the emissions produced. This affects the increase in GDP because of the cost of the SCC. Climate change in this context also focuses on discount rates, the presence of free riding and geopolitics, especially in developing countries’ businesses in addressing climate change by reducing emissions, thereby increasing economic growth.
Frequently, climate change issues have become a focus on environmental and economic sciences. Nevertheless, sociology has not made a major contribution to climate change. Climate change itself requires people to be able to adapt, which also has an impact on interaction. Then, this change, in some conditions require people to migrate within a certain period. Sociological interventions are needed to overcome this.
For example, climate change and global inequality, especially the issue of social justice. There are four main issues of climate change that influence human rights, namely the welfare of industrialized countries that contribute to contributing to emissions, weak infrastructure development in developed countries, the establishment of negotiations between industrialized countries in policy-making, and equality between generations.
Nonetheless, the issue of climate change according to Nagel, et. Al (2008), sociologists respond slowly to this matter, because of the absence of opportunity, and of course the property of scientists. In fact, climate change is related to sociology, which is the social impact. According to some experts, the failure of sociology in explaining climate change is caused by marginalization by natural sciences, such as the uncertainty of the social impacts of these changes.
Even though, there are actually a few points from sociology that can explain it like environmental sociology, although it looks utopian. The thing can stimulate sociology to contribute, one of which is through discipline, innovation in theory, and dialogue with natural sciences. However, there are several things that can be the focus of sociology when looking at this phenomenon are the economic and political discussion.
According to Zehr (2015), the contribution of sociology actually contributes to climate change in terms of energy use, which is seen in his research questions, such as the form of energy that interacts with the socio-technical system, the reconstruction of carbon use and the development of energy according to the social system. On other studies, the social impact of climate change is a social gap that refers to the regression model, population, causes, and technology, until then the variable becomes a cross-national comparison, namely on non-governmental organization activities. The human population is one of the causes of climate change, especially in developing countries and developed countries that are associated with carbon dioxide emissions.
Then, another impact namely changes in sustainable development policies that focus on population growth. Sociology plays a role in overcoming population growth, which is a predictor of climate change. Moreover, the industrial development also contributes to climate change by exploiting resources, causing migration to fertile villages, to emission metabolism. Furthermore, the existence of ecological modernization based on economic rationale will have an impact on the environment, so it becomes another predictor.
If the impact is not intervened by NGOs, additionally this will give bad news to the community, because of the absence of protection and exploitation, as well as competition between developed and developing countries. Therefore, the inequality cannot be avoided.
