CNN published that the “planet has only until 2030 to stem catastrophic climate change, experts warn” on Monday, October 8. What card can humanity play to turn this around? If reversing global warming flew over individuals’ heads before, now its degree of severity illustrates its impact on more than nature itself—but its threat towards the human population. Care to listen to the “tree huggers” now? To save the environment and mankind, widespread changes to energy industries, production facilities, transportation fuels, and city functions must take place.

Norway joined the fight to halt catastrophic global climate change and banned deforestation on May 26, 2018. The Norwegian Standing Committee on Energy and the Environment ended its air pollution contributions through deforestation by revising The Action Plan on Nature Diversity. The new imposition protects biodiversity, encourages deforestation-free supply chains, and begins sustainably sourcing raw materials.

Deforestation negatively impacts the environment by fueling habitat destruction, driving climate change, and generating temperature swings.  Eighty percent of Earth’s land plants and animals call forests their homes and die with destructive deforestation. Wiping out trees and vegetation significantly decreases animals’ food supply and habitat space, catalyzing biodiversity loss. As the main contributor to evolution, threatening biodiversity also imperils future ecosystem prosperity. Rather than destroying and building over biodiversity, people must value and preserve the synergistic miracle.

Acting as a natural carbon reservoir, forests also play a critical role in absorbing greenhouse gases that fuel global warming. With deforestation, greenhouse gases continue entering the atmosphere, increasing global warming’s speed and severity. Temperatures rise with every tree chopped. Without shielding canopy covering, the sun sears the moist forest soil to a crisp. Depriving the forest of portions of its canopy causes extreme temperature swings, harming plants and animals.

Alongside global climate change, another detrimental deforestation impact includes its hindrance of the water cycle. Plants perform transpiration, the process of perspiring water absorbed through their roots, which then evaporates into the atmosphere. Transpiration purifies the water before it reenters the water cycle, naturally ridding it from anthropogenic pollutants. As the human population battles a global water crisis, permitting deforestation catalyzes the resource scarcity and generates further complications for life on Earth.

Norway takes one step as a country that cannot suffice as a giant leap for mankind. Worldwide action must take place at an effort to halt catastrophic global climate change. To join Norway’s mission and avoid disastrous levels of global warming, nations must implement stricter environmental protocol and industry regulation. France executed The Energy Transition for Green Growth on August 17, 2015, set to take full effect in 2020. The Green Growth Act aims to cease climate change by using natural resources for economic development, providing jobs in a cleaner, healthier place to live, and transitioning inefficient facilities into sustainable structures. Without global cooperation in mitigating carbon dioxide emissions and converting pollutive societies into conservative ones, humanity stands no chance.

If people enjoy life on Earth as it exists today, they should consider targeting their greenhouse gas emissions, total energy consumption, fossil fuel usage, landfill contribution, and alternative energy source acquisition, to save their planet.