The article emphasizes the importance of setting both short-term and long-term climate targets to effectively address climate change. Short-term targets focus on immediate actions, creating urgency, measurable progress, immediate benefits, and building momentum for more ambitious goals. Long-term targets ensure sustainability, deep decarbonization, adaptation, and global cooperation. Achieving these goals is crucial for mitigating the worst effects of climate change and creating a more resilient future.
Short-term memory and long-term memory are two different types of memory with distinct characteristics. Short-term memory has a limited capacity, typically able to hold around seven items for a brief period, while long-term memory has a large capacity, virtually unlimited, and can store vast amounts of information for an extended period. Short-term memory lasts only for a few seconds unless it is repeatedly rehearsed or transferred to long-term memory, while long-term memory can last for minutes, hours, days, years, or even a lifetime. Short-term memory acts as a temporary holding place for new information, processing it before transferring it to long-term memory, while long-term memory stores information for future use, including facts, experiences, skills, and knowledge. Short-term memory has a faster retrieval speed since the information is readily available in the mind, while long-term memory has a slower retrieval speed as it requires more effort to recall the information from the vast storage. Short-term memory is more susceptible to interference and forgetting due to its transient nature, while long-term memory is more stable and less prone to interference, making it easier to retain information over time. Short-term memory requires rehearsal or encoding processes to transfer information to long-term memory, while long-term memory involves consolidation processes that strengthen neural connections and make the memory more durable.