Pieces of G8 – Climate Change
Twelve years too late, the leaders of the G8 agreed today to prevent global temperatures rising by more than 2C. An ‘acceptable’ temperature rise that will, according to the latest research, destroy half the rainforest. As some of the largest carbon sinks on Earth, after the oceans, the disappearance of the rainforests will make efforts to contain climate change more difficult than ever. The gloomiest of reports predict that the loss of carbon sinks due to rising temperatures will create a runaway greenhouse effect.
Even without a 2C rise in temperatures, over 13,000 sq km of sea ice in the Antarctic Peninsula have been lost over the last 50 years, leading to rising sea levels that are already adversely affecting communities in low lying parts of the world. And whilst disappearing ice means too much water in Bangladesh, in Bolivia, where millions of people source their drinking water from Andean glaciers, it means not enough. This year saw the disappearance of the Chacaltaya glacier. The last piece of Bolivia’s famous ski resort sits in the freezer of hydrologist Edson Ramirez. For Ramirez, Chacaltaya’s disappearance is a warning of worse things to come as the retreat of the glaciers that supply La Paz and the burgeoning population of El Alto means that from this year onwards “demand for water will be progressively greater than supply.”
The G8’s agreement is, of course, a step forward. But considering the world has spent eight years limping behind George W. Bush, a step forward is not very far. The Obama administration is to be commended for finally bringing America out of the 20th Century so that progress on climate change can be made on a global level. And, if kept, the agreement by G8 nations to cut carbon emissions by 80% by 2050 is indeed an historic one. But it is not history we should be looking to. It’s the future. And I can’t help thinking, this is much too little, much too late.
Join the call for a strong climate change treaty…
Related posts:
- Copenhagen: History is Watching
- Protestors blockade the Department of Energy and Climate Change
- Bugger: A Brief Introduction to Climate Contradictions
- The Wave: Stop Climate Chaos
Reader Comments
Even though I agree that the World leaders have approached the issue of climate change in the most ludicrously lacksidasical fashion imaginable I can’t help but think that the sooner the human race gets wiped out the better. Then the planet just carry on doing what it’s done for the last few millenium without interruption.
I guess it’s inevitable that a post concerning the environment would eventually attract some bloody misanthrope.
That’s not a prospect I’m really looking forward to Megan. My environmentalism does not stem simply from human utility. But nor is it based purely on the good of the planet for the planet’s sake alone. People can be very stupid. But I happen to like the human race. I have a vested interest in its survival.
Moreover, treating environmental destruction as a reflection upon the general human character completely ignores the distribution of social and political power, and the systematic circumstances within which humans act.
Ok, ok….I’ll admit my comment was fairly misanthropic but can you blame me? I really do beleive that environmental destruction IS a reflection of human character. Human being are essentially greedy and selfish. It is, quite literally, in our genes. Perhaps if we weren’t so busy worrying how we were going to finance our next iPod our selfish genes might actually have evolved to adapt to the changing economic climate (as well as the environmental…). Unfortunately as a species we are too intelligent for our own good. We do far to much sitting around thinking than getting on with survival and have completely lost the ability to adapt. But, so what…species die out and other ones evolve all the time. And by time I’m talking the more environmentally relevant timescale of millennia. Dispite all our pretensions we are nothing more than dinosaurs with the ability to become masters of our own destruction.
Nothing biological can lose the ability to adapt — it’s an inevitability if nature prescribes it. Equally, evolution cannot be driven directly by psychological or social focus.
At any rate — I quite like my existence and consequently feel we need to bar the fuck up I am to continue to enjoy it.