Sustainability is the most important keyword for our modem society. It has been approximately 4.6 billion years since the formation of the Earth, a few hundred thousand years since the birth of contemporary human beings, two hundred and fifty years since the industrial revolution, and fifteen years since the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions became an international binding commitment for the first time. The level of CO_2 emissions has increased by roughly 120 ppm since the Industrial Revolution, when it was just 280 ppm. The IPCC provided a comprehensive assessment of the physical science basis for climate change in their 5th assessment report, in which they wrote that warming of the climate system is unequivocal and, since the 1950s, many of the changes we have observed are unprecedented over not just decades but millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, the sea level has risen, and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased.
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