The Climate-Change Time Bomb

Coastal communities, people living on small islands, peasant and pastoral communities are the greatest victims of climate-linked disasters, though they are the ones who have had the least role in climate destabilization, says biotechnologist Vandana Shiva.

NEW DELHI - Fire has been central to human evolution and to many of the world's religions. But when it moved from hearths to industrial furnaces, and combustion engines became the driving force of production, trade and transport, fire ceased to be the great purifier and became the great polluter.

From then on, the CO2 produced by human activity started to exceed the planet's capacity to absorb it.

Now climate instability in the form of more extreme floods and droughts, more frequent heat waves and freezing winters are the result of atmospheric pollution caused by wealthier regions of the world and wealthier people.

Since 1950, the US has contributed 186.1 billion tons of CO2, European Union 127.8, China 57.6 and India 15.5.

From 1850 to the mid-1990s, the global CO2 level of the atmosphere rose from 280 to 360 parts per million (ppm).

As the level of CO2 rises, more heat is trapped by molecules of CO2, and global temperatures rise, creating climate instability and threats to survival of humans and other species. In addition to CO2, there are over a dozen over greenhouse gases. The concentration of one of these, methane (CH4), has increased from 0.7 parts per million four centuries ago to 1.7 ppm in 1988.

Recognizing that industrialization and the age of petroleum had unleashed an unplanned experiment with the atmosphere and climate, delegates from fifty countries met for the first International Conference on the Changing Atmosphere in May 1988 to take steps to address the problem. An Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established, and today is made up of 2,500 scientists.

In June 1992, at the Earth Summit in Rio, 132 heads of state approved the Framework Convention on Climate Change - a negotiating mechanism to promote agreement among all nations on how to respond to the gathering climate threat. More than 160 countries have ratified it.

In December 1997, the delegates to the Climate Change Convention met in Kyoto, Japan, to decide on targets and timetables for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

However, the fossil fuel lobby obstructed commitments. The United States had always been skeptical about the Kyoto agreement to curb greenhouse gases. One of the first things US president George W. Bush did in office was to declare in March that his country would not support the agreement and to abandon his campaign pledge to curb CO2 emissions from power plants.

This was his reasoning: "Our economy has slowed. We also have an energy crisis, and the idea of placing caps on CO2 does not make economic sense."

Does it make economic sense to threaten millions of lives and wipe out billions of assets?

The Global Commons Institute has calculated that by 2005, the damage due to climate change might be 200 billion dollars and by 2012 would reach 400 billion dollars. By 2050, the damage caused to property could equal 20,000 billion dollars - the value of all goods and services that humanity produces.

There is a very clear reason why insurance companies are taking climate change seriously.

The small island states have been the most persistent in demanding CO2 cuts from the industrialized countries. They organized themselves as the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS). Members of AOSIS know that severe hurricanes, intense rainstorms, and sea level rise could flood them out of existence.

As Teburoro Tito, President of Kiribati in the Pacific Islands states, "It's like little ants making a home on a leaf floating on a pond, and the elephants go to drink and roughhouse in the water. The problem isn't the ant's behavior. It's a problem of law to convince the elephants to be more gentle."

While the ant and elephant metaphor is good for illustrating climate injustice, climate change also threatens the survival of the elephant who is roughing up the water.

Washington should realize that its refusal to make any cutbacks could have disastrous effects on the country - as well as the rest of the world. Rises in sea level would threaten the East Coast of the United States, and its Gulf Coast states of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. The Environmental Protection Agency calculates that a two-foot sea level rise would wipe out 17 to 43 percent of US wetlands. Drought could wipe out agriculture in the mid-west.

A sea-level rise of three feet would force the evacuation of more than 70 million Chinese and 30 million Bangladeshis. Floods, cyclones, droughts and heat waves are already threatening the lives of millions.

The IPCC predicts an average increase of global temperatures by 1.5 degrees centigrade to 6.0 degrees centigrade by 2100. Associated with changes in temperature, sea level is projected to increase by about 15-95 cm by 2100. The effects would be catastrophic. We must act now to avert them.

(COPYRIGHT IPS)

* Vandana Shiva, biotechnologist, author and international campaigner for women and the environment.