On February 15, The Siberian Times published the “ghostly pictures of dark snowscapes – which should be pristine white”. And indeed, eerie black snow covered a few towns situated in the Siberian region of Kuzbass (Kuznetsk Basin). This is one of the world's largest coal fields, spanning more than 10,000 square miles, but also the home of 2.6 million people.

Scientists found that from 2025 and all the way to 2035, heat events caused by global warming may increase the number of babies born with congenital heart diseases, by 7,000.

Now, among the dire changes that our planet is going through, wildlife is also threatened. Like it wasn’t quite enough that hurricanes were destroying everything in their paths, that the ice is melting in the Arctic and the Antarctic and that significant bacteria living in the oceans and the deserts is changing or dying, we also have droughts and floods. All this provokes countless human casualties every year.

Wealthy countries still tend to ignore the voices – and issues – of the poorer countries, that tend more toward the stringent needs, like education and health care. It's even more tragic since loss of life due to climate extremes tends to be high in less developed countries. Here, recovery from natural disasters is also slower. But in 2015, the Paris Agreement went one step further to fixing the discrepancies, while 195 countries adopted the first-ever universal, legally binding global climate deal.

Wealthy countries still tend to ignore the voices – and issues – of the poorer countries, that tend more toward the stringent needs, like education and health care. It's even more tragic since loss of life due to climate extremes tends to be high in less developed countries. Here, recovery from natural disasters is also slower. But in 2015, the Paris Agreement went one step further to fixing the discrepancies, while 195 countries adopted the first-ever universal, legally binding global climate deal.

"We are in a crisis in the evolution of human society. It's unique to both human and geologic history. It has never happened before and it can't possibly happen again. You can only use oil once," Hubbert said in 1988.

2018 was the 14th hottest year in the last 124 years recorded in the United States, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) confirmed. Deke Arndt – chief of the monitoring section of NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information in Asheville, North Carolina – says that record land and ocean temperatures were registered in Europe, Russia, the Middle East, New Zealand and in some parts of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

Natural gas is a fossil fuel that, when in combustion, produces heat-trapping CO2. It also generates other global emissions when leaking during extraction and its distribution. In the Current Policies Scenario, global gas demand rises by 2% per year, resulting in almost 60% more demand in 2040 than today.

As coal extraction and use is heavily based on science, more researchers and scientists come forward to testify that coal was viable, yes, but it also polluted the environment. At this point – which some call “the point of no return” – research stating that coal is bad for the environment and for human health, is overwhelming.

At the end of the 1970s, science was already pointing to the hazards that the accumulating CO2 into the atmosphere posed. During the following decade, scientists and activists had government officials across the globe to continuously address greenhouse gas emissions. They enacted policies that would impact climate, working together. It was a window of opportunity that might have changed the warming’s course. But they failed.