This is not my... Problem
We are the first generation to understand climate change.
We are the last who can stop it.
Why we need to worry about Climate Change..... |
|
 |
Climate change is already destroying peoples’ lives in the developing world. For some, droughts are causing crops to fail and for others rising seas are forcing them out of their homes.
In sub-Saharan Africa, where 80% of people are entirely dependent on rainfall to grow their food, climate change is shifting weather patterns, reducing precipitation and causing people to go hungry.
Of the hottest 21 years ever recorded, 20 have occurred within the last 25 and it is predicted to get progressively hotter still.* |
Unmitigated climate change may lead to continent-size structural famine in Africa, leading to malnourishment and starvation – even to the point of death – for hundreds of millions of people.
Sea level will be about 40 cm higher than today by the 2080s, increasing the annual number of people flooded from 13 million to 94 million.* The Maldives will be entirely submerged.
As disasters become more frequent and the developed world encounters its own problems there will be less financial assistance for the hardest hit, perversely, those who have done the least to contribute to the problem.
To contextualise - imagine the devastation of the devastating 2004 tsunami - now imagine no international response.
 |
For many decades the rich countries of the world have produced food surpluses. This is coming to an end.
In the summer of 2006 there were record high temperatures around the world, most dramatically in the mid-western US, some of the world’s most productive agricultural land. These high temperatures caused global crop yield reductions. We were literally eating into the reserves. At one point reaching a 56 day supply. The lowest level since the early 70’s.*
As temperatures rise, so food will become scarce and its price will rise. Shortages will occur and food aid to other nations will become an impossibility. |
Lack of food and water is likely to result in economic collapse, greater global insecurity and further financial burdens.
If the costs directly attributed to September 11 were more than $100bn it is hard to imagine the costs of security if there is not enough food in the world.*
The cost of defence from natural phenomena will also rise.
In the US, much of Florida and the Eastern seaboard will be at risk from flooding*, as will London. Already the necessity to close the thames barrier is far more frequent. In the 1980's it shut 8 times. It has closed 63 times in the last 10.
 |
Leading scientists tell us that a global average temperature increase of 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels will unleash catastrophic runaway climate change; an unstoppable chain of events leading to a world very different from the one we know today.
Allowing it to go over 2 degrees will trigger a range of ‘positive feedback systems’.
There would be a massive release of methane from high latitudes (a greenhouse gas 20 times as potent as carbon dioxide); huge releases of carbon from dieing rainforests; the unstoppable break up of the Greenland Ice Sheet and - eventually - a 7 metre sea level rise. |
This will further accelerate global warming, pushing the temperature up a further 6, 8, even 10 degrees.
There is a precedent for a 6 degree temperature rise. It occurred 250 million years ago and caused the Permian extinction, in which 95% of life on earth – plant and animal - was destroyed.
Although this period is not directly comparable to today, it serves as a warning that a failure to act now means that we are putting our environment - our life support system - in serious jeopardy.
We’re already 0.7 degrees above pre-industrial levels.
 |
The science tells us that it’s not yet too late.
Even though there is a time lag in the climatic system it is still possible to avoid going over the critical threshold of 2 degrees.
Current modeling shows that this will require a global 60% cut in CO2 emissions by 2030. For the rich countries of the world, such as the UK, this equates to a 90% reduction within this timescale.
A cut of this magnitude is - admittedly - somewhat difficult, but it is both technically and economically feasible. It just requires a big social and economic shift...* |
Nothing like a bit of a challenge hey...?
Challenge One: Accepting the (rather mindblowingly horrific) reality
Sadly - crazy hippy alarmism this is not.
Believe me - if we could come home to watch a cinema sized TV after a weekend of rally driving in Hong Kong knowing that the coal fires would keep burning and everyone worldwide would soon be able to choose a lifestyle similar, or - why not - an even more energy intensive one, we would be very happy indeed.
But scientific reality tells us this is just not possible.
Really, really not.
Challenge Two: Realising that no one else is going to tackle the problem if we don't
Getting out of bed in the morning is just so much easier when you think that ‘they’ (unidentifiable omnipotent scientists / responsible government ministers) will come up with something to solve the problem.
Rather unfortunately though - there is no 'they'.
(Or there is but 'they' are out scaring us with all of the above / having dodgy affairs with their secretaries, au pairs or a bloke they met on Hampstead Heath).
Which leaves... erm... us...
Oh sh*t...
 |
The measures that could lead the world to a 60% carbon dioxide emission reduction – 90% for us in the UK – are still hotly debated but are likely to involve:
Energy efficiency (at home, in business, in vehicles, in buildings... anywhere really) More electricity from renewable sources (biofuels, wind, solar, tidal, nuclear... hmm) Capturing capture and underground storage (sequestration) Global carbon trading, capping and apportioning (contraction and convergence) Protection (saving the forest and soils we still have) Lifestyle change (ouch - this one may hurt - but we do need to curtail it just a wee bit - and there is just so much more fun to be had doing new stuff) |
But we've run out of time.
So will have to tell you more on each of these in the next exciting installment - coming very soon - hopefully tommorow in fact - time being of the essence and all!
And don't worry if you have no idea how you can possibly assist with something like new vehicle technology or carbon sequestration - it's all in the delegation...
x
* Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth, 2006
*http://www.met-office.gov.uk/research/hadleycentre/pubs/brochures/B1999/imp_sea_rise.html
* Lester Brown, Earth Policy Institute, June 2006
*http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/3704943.stm
*http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/04/0420_040420_earthday.html
*http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmhansrd/cm050616/text/50616w12.htm
*George Monbiot, Heat – how to stop the planet burning, 2006
