Absolutely - there is this potential! There is a long history of global social change which has come about when humans have united and worked together. Social movements historically have been able to create big structural change, the kind of big change we will need to face climate change. These movements in the past include things like the Suffragettes who worked to give women the vote and the Civil Rights Movement which worked to abolish segregation. Humans are cooperative beings, we work together – and we’ve seen this time and time again in history.

We are already seeing unity in responding to climate change in many ways. School Strike 4 Climate and Fridays For Future movements are examples of how local unity of young people is part of a global movement. The Paris Agreement is also an example of how lots of different countries can come together for a shared goal. The IPCC too is a whole bunch of scientists working together to learn more about and respond to climate change. We have the capacity as humankind to work together (just look at the changes we were able to make during COVID in a really short amount of time!).

There is also the potential that climate change will exacerbate conflict and cause greater competition over resources as they become scarcer. So, whilst climate change does have the potential to unite humanity, it also has the potential to cause conflict and further divide people in power from people who don’t. That’s why it is important that we are working to find ways to collaborate now as we look to the future.

You can be a part of this! Collaborating and working together to respond to climate change in a united way can include you. This can be small scale collaboration as a school, or community groups, as well as national and international collaboration. Finding practices to work well together to share learning, to care for one another, and to respond to the threats of climate change is really important.

Thanks for asking this important question. In order to solve a problem, first, we must identify and define the problem. 

Even though the science of global warming was discovered as far back as 1856, climate scientists only started to use the term ‘global warming’ in the 1980s. Global warming refers to the average global surface temperate increase caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases. Global warming is mainly understood as temperature rise, but it’s a bit more complicated than this.  The warming leads to changes in weather patterns and air and water currents, which can mean that in a few places, colder weather is sometimes caused by global warming. The term confused some people, so scientists started to use a different term, ‘climate change’. 

Climate change refers to the long-term change in the Earth’s climate.  It is a more comprehensive term because it includes side effects of warming such as melting glaciers, heavier rain and storms, more frequent drought, frequent bushfires, changes in ocean circulations and ocean acidity. So climate change describes how weather patterns will be affected differently around the globe. 

If you’d like to keep up with the latest news in climate science, scientists have started to use new terms:

Climate disruption, climate crisis and climate emergency are a few of these. The common feature of these terms is that the rising average global temperature has consequences (for example disruption) and requires urgent action.  These terms may be more effective to get the message out because climate change action is urgent.