SDG and climate change.

Progress and modernity on the back of the industrial revolution came with a high price tag. The consumption of fuel and gas for transportation and to run factories contaminated the atmosphere to the extent that the naturally accumulated greenhouse gases (GHG) increased in volume. The atmosphere consequently trapped more heat which, when radiated back to earth, led to melting glaciers, high sea levels, incessant rainfalls and drought.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2013a, 2013b, 2014) makes it clear that human beings are responsible for climate change and that the recent anthropogenic GHG emissions are the highest in history.

In this context, collective action is required to address the problems associated with climate change. The year 2015 was extraordinary in this regard. The United Nations Agenda 2030 was preceded and followed by two landmark events: The Encyclical Letter Laudato Si ('Praised Be'), published by Pope Francis in May 2015 and the Paris Agreement on climate change in December 2015.

The letter pinned the responsibility of global warming on the energy supply system built on the fossil fuel:

'The climate is a common good, belonging to all and meant for all. At the global level, it is a complex system linked to many of the essential conditions for human life. A very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climatic system. In recent decades, this warming has been accompanied by a constant rise in the sea level and, it would appear, by an increase of extreme weather events, even if a scientifically determinable cause cannot be assigned to each particular phenomenon.

'Humanity is stimulated to recognise the need for changes of lifestyle, production, and consumption, in order to combat this warming or at least the human causes, which produce or aggravate it. It is true that there are other factors (such as volcanic activity, variations in the earth's orbit and axis, the solar cycle), yet a number of scientific studies indicate that most global warming in recent decades is due to the great concentration of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen oxides and others) released mainly as a result of human activity.

'Concentrated in the atmosphere, these gases do not allow the warmth of the sun's rays reflected by the earth to be dispersed in space. The problem has been exacerbated by a model of development based on the intensive use of fossil fuels...