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CLIMATE CHANGE: 'We Have Run Out of Time'
By Julio Godoy
ROME, Jun 14 (IPS) - New scientific research suggests that climate change is taking place faster than
foreseen in studies considered so far, according to environmental experts at a
forum on climate change called by the Global Legislators Organisation for a
Balanced Environment (GLOBE).
"We have run out of time," Ashok Khosla, president of the International Union
for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the world's largest environmental
association, told IPS. "Climate change is happening at a swifter speed than we
thought so far."
Khosla, an Indian national, holds degrees in physics and natural sciences, and
has taught and worked on environmental and social economics since the
1970s. He leads several non-governmental organisations committed to
human development.
Katherine Richardson, a leading marine biologist researching the effect of
climate change effect on the oceans, told IPS, "Sea levels are rising 50 percent
faster than expected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC).
"If humankind does not stop climate change in the immediate future, at the
observed present rate sea levels shall rise by at least one metre by the year
2010." This would aggravate the catastrophic consequences already forecast
for human settlements along coasts, especially in the developing world, she
said.
The acidity of oceans' water is also increasing rapidly, Richardson said. "If
nothing changes to stop global warming, by 2065 no region will have corals."
This degradation of the oceans has been provoked by a fast rise in
greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions. "The emissions in the last three or four
years were all above the estimated range of projections," Richardson said.
"Since 1990, emissions have risen by 17 percent."
This growth in GHG emissions since 1990 has important relative and absolute
value because that year's emissions are used to measure reductions foreseen
in the Kyoto protocol. Under Kyoto, industrialised countries agreed to reduce
their collective GHG emissions by 5.2 percent compared to 1990 levels.
The growth is dramatic, because "societies and ecosystems are highly
vulnerable to even modest levels of climate change. Temperature rises above
two degrees Celsius will be very difficult for contemporary societies to cope
with," Richardson said.
Khosla said that conventional wisdom on climate change is that average rise
in temperatures should not go beyond two degrees Celsius in order to keep
rising concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere below 400 parts per
million (ppm).
"But we are already at 387 ppm," Khosla said. "We have practically no time to
stop this growth of greenhouse gases emissions."
Despite intense international dialogue over the last 40 years on the
environmental consequences of economic growth, and almost 20 years of
debates on how to tackle climate change and solve the environmental crisis
associated with global warming, "practically nothing has been reached so
far," Ian Dunlop, an Australian economist and expert on energy told IPS.
"Since 1972, when the Club of Rome published its study on the 'Limits of
Growth', and outlined the problem of unsustainable economic growth,
humankind has proved incapable of accepting, so far, that the most
important factor for our own survival is the preservation of a biosphere fit for
human habitation," Dunlop said. The Club of Rome is a global think-tank that
carried out pioneering work on climate change.
Richardson, Khosla, and Dunlop were in Rome Jun. 12-13 to participate in
the international forum on climate change organised by GLOBE. The forum
brought together more than 100 environmental legislators from 13 countries,
and several scientists and experts.
Dunlop pointed out that because of the global economic depression,
industrialised nations are trying to encourage more consumption.
"Governments are applying economic measures conceived some 80 years ago
to stimulate old industries and save banks, and by so doing are skyrocketing
their deficits and debts, thus crowding out investments in environmental
policies," he said.
The solutions for tackling climate change are clear, Dunlop said. "The
problem is that vested interests, representing the old economy, which caused
climate change, keep a tight hold of politics."
Khosla said the world is ravaged by a demographic crisis and by an unjust
concentration of income, closely linked to a dramatic degradation of the
environment.
"The richest fifth of the world's population takes some 85 percent of the
world's income," Khosla said. "Meanwhile 2.5 billion people, well over one-
third of the world's population, must survive with less than two dollars per
day."
At the same time, the poorest people are the main victims of the
environmental degradation associated with climate change and the depletion
of nature by the present economic model. "Some three to four billion people
are surviving on a landscape of poverty, vulnerability, and environmental
degradation," Khosla said.
New global policies must, he said, aim to increase human development in the
poorest countries to solve "the climate change paradox: by 2050, the world
will have several billion extra tonnes of carbon emissions, unless the poorest
populations have access to higher levels of energy services." This is only
possible with "human, sustainable development, now, and for all inhabitants
of the world."
Colin Bradford, economist at the Brookings Institute in the U.S., called on
governments to "recover economics from neo-liberal ideologies." Since the
1970s, he said, following the rise to power of former British prime minister
Margaret Thatcher and former U.S. president Ronald Reagan, "economics
stopped to be a social science and became a prisoner of ideologues."
These ideologues' belief that free markets would correct themselves, and set
the prices right, "has proven utterly wrong," Bradford told IPS. "For instance,
the oil market price is wrong, the carbon market price is wrong, both are too
low."
The prices of both have a strong impact on climate change. A low price makes
both fossil fuels more competitive compared with low-carbon energy
sources. Scientists agree that the combustion of fossil fuels, which produces
high amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, is the main
cause of global warming and climate change.
(END/2009)
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