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A DIGEST OF EVENTS AND ISSUES – JANUARY/FEBRUARY

Who Cares about Climate Change?

The Federal Government’s pathetic proposal to reduce carbon pollution, and the Opposition’s contention that even with this Clayton’s plan to tackle climate change “we’ll all be rooned!” both indicate that they are totally ignorant of the catastrophe threatening the planet, and that their first priority is to protect the profits of our worst polluters.

In his foreword to the World Watch Institute’s “State of The World 2009”, R K Pachauri, Director General, The Energy and Resources Institute, and Chairman, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), leaves no room for doubt:

“On the basis of strong and robust scientific evidence, the IPCC stated clearly that ‘ warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level.’

The scientific evidence is undeniable, but behind the cold statistics the potential they hold for human suffering unless GHG pollution is halted is mind bending. Consider the following examples:

The Rudd government’s targets for emission reductions of 5-15% by 2020 would risk temperature rises of up to 3°C which would destroy the Great Barrier Reef and Kakadu and further degrade the Murray/Darling system. Apparently these losses are acceptable to the government.

Increasing global temperatures have accelerated the melting rate of Himalayan glaciers feeding the principal rivers in India and China. In 2007 the IPCC said that it was reasonable to expect that unless GHG emissions were stabilised these glaciers would be gone by the middle of the century. 70% of the water in the Ganges River comes from the rapidly shrinking Gangotri glacier. Once it disappears 40% 0f India’s irrigated cropland and 400 million people will be affected. Half the population of China live in the valleys of its two principal rivers that depend on glacial melt, particularly in the dry season.
In 2005 the eminent climate scientist Dr James Hansen warned that: “We are on the precipice of climate system tipping points beyond which there is no redemption”. And Dr Jay Zwally, a glaciologist at NASA, commenting on the near disappearance of the Arctic sea ice in 2008 concluded that “The Arctic is often cited as the canary in the coal mine for climate warming…and now as a sign of climate warming the canary has died.” Most climate scientists now think that the permanent loss of Arctic sea ice predicted for 2012 will be the tipping point for a much hotter global climate and dangerous sea-level rises.

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