Progress in coping with global warming has been slow. Countries have taken certain positive steps of late. But it doesn’t mean that the Paris conclave will be a turning point in the war against global warming
According to a report by Justin Gillis, datelined October 21 and published in The New York Times under the heading, “2015 likely to Be Hottest Year Ever Recorded”, global temperatures, running far above 2014’s record-setting level, make it almost certain that 2015 will be the hottest year in recorded history. While the immediate cause of this has reportedly been a strong El Nino, a weather condition that releases enormous amounts of heat in the atmosphere, scientists hold that the much higher levels or temperature, compared to those during the last strong El Ninos (1997 and 1998), indicates contribution by human emission of greenhouse gases as well. The consequences of this and the last year’s unprecedentedly high temperatures have included dry weather and forest fires in Indonesia, an incipient drought in Australia, a severe one in Ethiopia, a developing food crisis in parts of Africa, and drought and forest fires in California in the United States.
The US-based Council on Foreign Relations’ Issue Brief, entitled, The Global Climate Change Regime, cites the American Meteorological Society as mentioning a 90 per cent probability of global temperatures rising by 3.5 to 7.4 degrees Celsius in less than a 100 years, with even greater increases over land and the poles. The consequences would include rising sea levels, extreme and volatile weather patterns, desertification, famine, water shortages and conflicts — all spelling widespread disaster.
Mentioning other consequences, Paul R Ehlrich and Anne H Ehlrich state in The Dominant Animal: Human Evolution and the Environment, “Destabilization of the climate can undermine biodiversity, exterminating populations and species that cannot adapt or move fast enough to keep up with changing habitats, including species that may play important roles in support of agriculture. Ecosystems may be torn apart as species migrate at different rates and in response to differing changes.”
Conflicts can follow the migration of people, displaced by the submergence of their homelands following a rise in ocean level, thanks to global warming, into other regions where the original residents see their influx as threatening their resources and living standards. Population shifts caused by famines, desertification and water shortages can lead to the same result.
Tensions can be worsened by cultural, religious and ethnic differences. The genocidal attack on Tutsis by Hutus which killed hundreds of thousands in Rwanda in 1994, was prompted not just by ethnic hatred but also a desire to grab the former’s land. The Arab surge into Sudan’s Darfur and adjoining areas, inhabited mainly by pastoral people and the consequent massive slaughter of the latter, was triggered by a drought.
Unfortunately, progress in coping with global warming has been slow. The limited Kyoto Protocol on curbing greenhouse gas emissions, remains comatose; the Copenhagen meeting of 2009 delivered little. The historic accord in lima, Peru, on December 14, 2014, doubtless saw the representatives of the nearly 200 participating nations committing their respective countries to reducing fossil fuel emissions by March 31 this year and drawing up plans detailing how much emission each would cut by 2020, and the domestic policies it would follow to that end. Those failing to keep the deadline, it further stipulated, would have to produce their plans by June.
The lima Accord, as the agreement is called, however, lacks legal sanction; nor does it bind countries to reducing emissions to a particular level. It depends on these honouring their commitments, which all may not do. All eyes are now on the Paris summit to be held from November 30 to December 11, 2015. While past disappointments have bred pessimism, the demand for purposeful action is growing with Pope Francis calling for a radical transformation of politics, economic activity and individual lifestyles, and a quick and united global response to the challenge. In a 184-page papal encyclical, issued on June 18, he blamed relentless exploitation and destruction of the environment, excessive faith in technology and political shortsightedness for climate change.
The Pope has clearly stated his hope that the encyclical would influence energy and economic policies and start a global movement. There have been encouraging developments, some of them predating the Pope’s landmark statement. US President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan, announced on August 3, proposes a 32 per cent cut (from 2005 levels) in carbon emissions from power plants in the US by 2030. This is higher than the initial proposal of 30 per cent, though states will only have to comply by 2022 rather than 2020 as originally proposed, and will be able to submit their plans on meeting the targets by 2018 instead of 2017.
The new plan, which will significantly boost wind and solar power generation and force a switch away from coal power, is a landmark development; nothing on this scale of reduction had been announced earlier.
In September, Brazil announced a plan for an absolute cut in emission levels over the next decade — and not merely for restraints on continued increase as well as its commitment to end illegal deforestation and restore millions acres of degraded forests. In a joint statement in Washington, DC, on September 25, China’s President Xi Jinping and Mr Obama outlined how they intended to give shape to their joint statement on climate change issued in Beijing on November 12, 2014.
The steps included an agreement to strictly control public investment, both at home and abroad, in highly-polluting and carbon-intensive projects, implement new fuel efficiency standards for heavy duty vehicles in 2019, and to develop efficiency standards for buildings and equipment. President Obama said on the occasion that next year, the US would be finalising standards which would, by 2025, reduce methane emissions in the oil, gas and landfill sectors by 40 per cent to 45 per cent from 2012 levels. It will also press ahead with proposals to phase out hydrofluorocarbons.
In July, the US Environmental Protection Agency outlawed the use of some of the most harmful HFCs in aerosols, refrigeration and air conditioning sectors.
On September 25, President Xi also announced China’s decision to implement, in 2017, a national emissions trading scheme involving a cap-and-trade programme that would annually provide a limit to the permissible national level of pollution, issue to industries permits to pollute, and allow the less polluting industries to sell their permits to the more polluting ones.
The above are positive developments. These, however, do not guarantee a consensus on measures and targets that will make the Paris conclave a turning point in the war against global warming. After all, action has seldom matched platitudinous promises.
