One human virtue is our ability to see the outcome of our behavior. God gives us this ability to avoid bad situations; but most humans usually avoid changing our long term behavior. “Allah grants wisdom to whoever He wills. And whoever is granted wisdom is certainly blessed with a great privilege. But none will be mindful of this except people of reason.” (Quran 2:269)

President Trump signed (on April 8, 2025) a series of executive orders to help the coal industry, a major polluting energy source that’s been in decline, to allow some older coal-fired power plants set for retirement to keep producing electricity even though over the past 15 years, the U.S. has seen a major shift from coal to natural gas for electricity use, a key reason U.S. carbon emissions have declined over that period. Next Trump will go to court against state climate change laws aimed at reducing planet-warming gas pollution from fossil fuels.

So the bad news is that heat waves have gotten hotter in the Northern Hemisphere in recent decades. Glaciers around the globe are disappearing faster than ever, with the last three-year period seeing the largest glacial mass loss on record,

So for 2 billion people, in a mostly tropical belt across the globe, climate change made it three times more likely to be hotter every single day of July 2023-2024. This includes the million-person city of Mecca, in Saudi Arabia.

The world added the smallest amount of new coal capacity in two decades last year but use of coal fossil fuel is still surging in China and India. Coal accounts for just over a third of global electricity production and phasing it out is fundamental to meeting climate change goals.

So Earth continues to warm, and more and more of the planet is becoming dry. A 2024 UN report found that in the last three decades, over three-fourths of all the world’s land became drier than it had been in the previous 30 years. Drylands now comprise 40.6% of all global land (excluding Antarctica). In addition, the number of people living in drylands has doubled over the last 30 years to 2.3 billion, which represents over 25% of the global population.

But while the Arctic is warming at three to four times the global average, new research says the slowing of a key ocean current could reduce projected Arctic warming by up to 2 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. 

The majority of Christians, Jews, and Muslims do not believe that all of humanity is moving closer and closer to a catastrophic Judgement Day. The minority who do think that Judgement Day is coming share the usual negative, fear-filled views of most end-times thinkers: Christians, Jews and especially Muslims, who do believe that: “The hour (of Judgement) is near” (Qur’an 54:1); and ˹The time of˺ people’s judgment has drawn near, yet they heedlessly turn away.” (Qur’an 21:1) 

Sadly these end-times thinkers always see pre-ordained threats of cataclysmic world wide doom; and not just as Armageddon being a warning of the consequences if we humans do not repent and change our behavior. Armageddon is a powerful challenge that can be overcome if most people will stop fighting each other and co-operate to reduce climate change. 

But if we do not act there is an Islamic oral tradition (Hadith) that states: The Hour will not commence  until no one goes (travels) to perform Hajj. (Hakim 4:453 and Abi Ya’li 2:277); because the annual hajj pilgrimage to Mecca in the summer will become harder and harder.

So far the ten years........

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