Environment Expansion of uninhabitable zones - in the context of the period at the beginning of the 21st century

Environment Expansion of uninhabitable zones - in the context of the period at the beginning of the 21st century

At the beginning of the 21st century, climate change research warned of the possibility of billions of people being locked out of the comfortable climate zones on which human civilization had been built. It was predicted that the average temperature of 13 to 25 degrees Celsius would collapse, and that one-third of the population would be left behind in extremely hot zones averaging over 29 degrees Celsius if they were not forced to migrate. The future vision of a Sahara-like environment spreading across the world was already being discussed as a realistic crisis at the time.

The Kyoto Protocol set a goal of limiting the rise in temperature within two degrees Celsius, but the withdrawal of the United States and the expansion of emissions by emerging countries prevented reductions, and global warming continued unabated. Repeated heat waves in India and Pakistan, the normalization of extreme heat exceeding 40°C in the Middle East, and droughts and food shortages in the Sahel region of Africa caused an outflow of climate refugees and shook the world as a crisis already in progress.

In addition, the population explosion and urbanization exacerbated the situation. Hundreds of millions of people in South Asia and Africa, where cooling and power grids are inadequate, are exposed to extreme heat, which has exacerbated heat stroke and water shortages. Development of heat-tolerant crops, energy-efficient building materials, and high-efficiency cooling systems was explored, but inequality limited their spread. Migration emerged as a practical solution, and high-latitude regions such as Canada and Scandinavia were considered new candidates for emigration. It was also during this period that the international community was confronted with the new challenge of "climate refugees" in the post-Cold War international order.

The expansion of uninhabitable zones was a phenomenon that symbolized the historical background of the early 21st century as a crisis of human survival at the intersection of scientific alarm, demographic trends, political stagnation, and the limits of technological innovation.