Climate Change: Time is Running Out -Climate chaos is inevitable
Pastor Dale Morgan
Climate Change: Time is Running Out -Climate chaos is inevitable *
* The Guardian,
* Tuesday June 17 2008
Mark Lynas (Climate chaos is inevitable. We can only avert oblivion,
June 12) is correct to highlight the dire lack of urgency on action to
cut climate-changing emissions, but he is wrong to suggest that we ditch
the UN's Kyoto climate treaty in favour of an approach that targets
fossil fuel companies.
It has taken some 16 years since the Rio earth summit to negotiate the
weak climate change agreements that now exist under the Kyoto framework.
Seeking agreement on a totally new climate deal could easily take as
long again. Imagine the negative reaction of Chinese, Russian, Indian
and American coal, oil and gas companies to the idea of a new treaty
limiting their businesses, and the response from their governments.
There would be total deadlock and many more years would be wasted.
Moreover, a new treaty process would most likely play into the hands of
governments and industry sectors who would rather we did nothing.
Indeed, George Bush's major economies climate change initiative is
exactly this: a tactic to kill Kyoto so as to avoid any new agreement on
binding cuts.
Unfortunately, Kyoto is the only chance we have. The priority now is to
get the best possible deal at the UN climate talks meeting in Copenhagen
in 2009. This could well be our last chance to avoid a climatic
catastrophe. - Tony Juniper - Executive director, Friends of the Earth
Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) achieved a "balance of terror" during
the cold war. It was frightening but it was "symmetric" on an east-west
axis, and it was ultimately "rational" that neither side pushed the button.
Since then, and despite the efforts of the UN, the near deadlock on
restraining the greenhouse gas emissions causing climate to change is
now 20 years old.
This has created an international political climate of Mutually Assured
Suicide (MAS). This time, on a north-south axis, both sides have got
their feet flat on the accelerator pedals, and it is now more terrifying
because it's patent. Also, unlike MAD, while imminent climate disaster
may become symmetric in effect, it is not symmetric in its causes, and
the rationality that caused us to stop last time now needs to be
adjusted to reflect this asymmetry.
The objective of the UN climate treaty is framed as an upper limit to
greenhouse gas accumulation in the global atmosphere on which we all
depend for a stable climate. Emissions are proportional to wealth so
both of these, as a tension between rich and poor within the
over-consumption causing climate change, are problems. That is why the
UN itself has said that an overall contraction of emissions within which
a convergence to equal shares per capita is "inevitably required" to
achieve the treaty's objective.
Many, now including the UK parliament's all-party climate group, Gordon
Brown, Tony Blair, David King, Ross Garnaut and his equivalent here
Nicholas Stern, Angela Merkel, Nicholas Sarkozy, Crispin Tickell and
many others support this argument.
We must make the transition Lynas rightly argues for, and we must
redress both the over-consumption and the asymmetry within it.- Aubrey
Meyer- The Global Commons Institute
Mark Lynas states that "50% to 80% of all species on earth could be
driven to extinction by the magnitude and rapidity of warming, and much
of the planet's surface left uninhabitable to humans".
As a geologist, I find that the 50% to 80% figure has no credible basis.
Frankly, we really don't have any idea how many organisms are going to
go extinct. The statement that much of "the planet's surface [will be]
left uninhabitable" is just not true. The mid-high latitudes and
equatorial regions will still be habitable (although hotter); the
subtropical regions will probably be less so. But since these are desert
regions today, it is only along the margins of the subtropics where
displacements should be significant.
Global warming is a serious issue, but claims like Lynas's are so out of
line that, by means of guilt by association, they frequently raise
credulity about legitimate mainstream concerns.- Thomas J Crowley -
Professor of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh