Climate Problems
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
Effects in the developing world
Climate change is already destroying peoples’ lives in the developing world. Droughts are causing crops to fail and rising seas forcing people from 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 leading to starvation.
Food riots have already broken out from Egypt to Haiti. With the growing global population, dwindling resources and an economic downturn, the trend is set to grow.
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. It will also lead to water shortages.
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 2004 tsunami - now imagine no international response.
Effects in the developed world
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 and the population grows, so food will become scarce and its price will rise. Shortages will occur and food aid to other nations will become an impossibility. Other natural resources such as oil and water have also reached a peak.
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 or water 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.
But the MAIN problem is that it will get worse
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. Think Mad Max meets Waterworld.
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.
Should we start building boats and stocking up on factor 20?
Leading scientists tell us that predictions in 2007 are already outdated. In May 2008, scientists released the atmospheric CO2 measurements for 2007. The concentration rose more than two ppm for a fourth year out of the last six: worse than feared. The situation is already more serious than it was when the Stern report was written (this pointed to a climate bill costing trillions of dollars with 200 million people becoming environmental refugees).
But still – it is not too late.
Even though there is a time lag in the climatic system it may still be possible to avoid going over the critical threshold of 2 degrees.
In 2007, modeling showed that this would require a global 60% cut in CO2 emissions by 2030. For the rich countries of the world, such as the UK, that equated to a 90% reduction within this timescale. With new reports showing even greater urgency, we not only need to make cuts sooner but look at ways to actually take carbon from the atmosphere.
There are ways to do this. The technology is already there. The knowledge is already there.
But we need to act now.
“We stand at a time where we still have the power to make a choice.”
