Increase in greenhouse gas emissions
Human activities have increased the amount of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere. Since the invention of the steam engine in the begining of the industrial revolution, humanity has been burning fossil fuel for energy generation, energy that’s being used in every economic sector.

Source: IPCC

Source: IPCC 2014(AR5)
Global inequalities in CO₂ emissions


The following chart is a distribution of carbon dioxide emitted by country/region in 2017.

y axis – CO2 emission(in tonnes) per person in 2017
The warming potential of methane
Even though the amount of methane in the atmosphere is small in comparison to carbon dioxide, this greenhouse gas traps 84 times more heat than carbon dioxide over a 20 year period. “Since the Industrial Revolution, methane concentrations in the atmosphere have more than doubled, and about 20% of the warming the planet has experienced can be attributed to the gas.” The main sources of methane emissions into the atmosphere are human activities like cattle grazing, leaks from oil and gas drilling sites and also landfills and sewage treatment centers. Keeping methane emissions in check is important in order to reduce the global heating in the next decades.
Reducing carbon sinks
Natural areas like peat bogs, forestry, oceans and wetlands are capturing and storing carbon from the atmosphere. Human activities like over-exploitation and deforestation has reduced the area of these environments that act as carbon sinks, thus reducing their capacity to store carbon.