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Kyoto Can't Save Us
By Mark Hertsgaard, AlterNet
At
the core of the global warming dilemma is a fact neither side of the debate
likes to talk about: it is already too late to prevent global warming and the
climate change it triggers.
Environmentalists won't say this for fear of sounding alarmist or defeatist.
Politicians won't say it because then they'd have to do something about it. But
the world's top climate scientists have been sending this message, with
increasing urgency, for years now.
Since 1988, the UNEP-associated Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
comprised of more than 2,000 scientific and technical experts from around the
world, has conducted the most extensive peer-reviewed scientific collaboration
in history.
In its 2001 report, the IPCC announced that human-caused global warming had
already begun, and much sooner than expected. What's more, it is bound to get
worse, perhaps a lot worse, before it gets better.
Last month, the IPCC's chairman, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, upped the ante.
Though Pachauri was installed after the Bush administration forced out his
predecessor, Dr. Robert Watson, for pushing too hard for action, the
accumulation of evidence led Pachauri to embrace apocalyptic language: 'We are
risking the ability of the human race to survive,' he said.
Until now, most public discussion about global warming has focused on how to
prevent it - for example, by implementing the Kyoto Protocol, which comes into
force internationally (but without US
participation) on Feb. 16.
But prevention is no longer a sufficient option. No matter how many 'green'
cars and solar panels Kyoto eventually calls into existence,
the hard fact is that a certain amount of global warming is inevitable.
The world community therefore must make a strategic shift: it must expand
its response to global warming to emphasize not only long-term but also
short-term protection. Rising sea levels and more weather-related disasters
will be a fact of life on this planet for decades to come, and we have to get
ready for them.
Among the steps needed to defend ourselves, we must act quickly to fortify
emergency response capabilities worldwide, to shield or relocate vulnerable
coastal communities and to prepare for increased migration flows by environmental
refugees.
We must also play offense. We must retroactively shrink the amount of
warming facing us by redoubling efforts to remove existing greenhouse gases
from the atmosphere and 'sequester' them where they are no longer dangerous.
One way is to plant trees, which absorb carbon dioxide via photosynthesis.
But researchers are exploring many other methods as well, some of them
supported by the Bush administration. For instance, Norway is burying carbon dioxide in old
oil wells beneath the North
Sea.
The problem with the Kyoto protocol is not that the 5 percent
greenhouse gas emission reductions it mandates don't go far enough, though they
don't - the IPCC urges 50 to 70 percent reductions. The problem is that Kyoto governs only future emissions. No
matter how well the protocol works, it will have no effect on past emissions,
and it is these past emissions that have made global warming unavoidable.
Contrary to the impression left by some news reports, global warming is not
like a light switch that can be turned off if we simply stop burning so much
oil, coal and gas. There is a lag effect of approximately 50 to 100 years.
That's how long carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas, remains in the
atmosphere after it is emitted from auto tailpipes, home furnaces and
industrial smokestacks. So even if humanity stopped burning fossil fuels
tomorrow, the earth would continue warming for decades.
So far, the greenhouse gases released during two-plus centuries of
industrialization have increased global temperatures by about one degree
Fahrenheit and raised sea levels by 4 to 7 inches. They have also given rise to
the larger phenomenon of climate change.
The IPCC scientists predict that because of global warming the future will
bring more and deadlier extreme weather of all kinds - more hurricanes,
tornadoes, downpours, heat waves, droughts and blizzards - and all that comes
in their wake: more flooding, landslides, power outages, crop failures,
property damage, disease, hunger, poverty and loss of life.
In California, torrential rains induced a
mudslide on Jan. 11 that killed ten people, buried children alive and crushed
dozens of houses. In 2003, a record summer heat wave left 35,000 - mainly
elderly people - dead across Western Europe.
And this is just the beginning. Scientists are careful to say that no single
weather event can be definitively linked to global warming. But the trend is
unmistakable to the insurance companies that end up paying the bill. 'Man-made
climate change will bring us increasingly extreme natural events and
consequently increasingly large catastrophe losses,' an official of Munich Re,
the world's large reinsurance company in the field of natural disaster
mitigation, said recently. Swiss Re expects losses to reach $150 billion a year
within this decade.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair regards climate change as 'the single
biggest long-term problem' of any kind facing his country. His government's top
scientist, Sir David King, goes further, calling climate change 'the biggest
danger humanity has faced in 5,000 years of civilization.'
Though the Bush White House continues to downplay the urgency of global
warming, some parts of the Bush administration have recognized the gravity of
the situation. A report released last April by the Pentagon's internal
think-tank, the Office of Net Assessments, said that, by 2020, climate change
could unleash a series of interlocking catastrophes. This could include
mega-droughts, mass starvation and even nuclear war, as countries like China and India battle over river valleys and other sources of scarce food
and water.
All of this underlines the urgency of revising the world's response to
climate change. To be sure, it remains essential to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions by strengthening the Kyoto Protocol and augmenting it with other
measures; otherwise, the amount of future warming civilization eventually will
have to endure will prove too great to survive. But in the meantime, it is
imperative to prepare against the climate change already on its way.
The need for such a two-track strategy of prevention and protection is
gaining acceptance from most of the world's governments. In Britain, the Department of the Environment
promises to publish its strategy for adapting to global warming by the end of
the year.
At the most recent international meeting on global warming, held in Buenos
Aires last December, a majority of the delegates supported the establishment of
a fund to aid countries already suffering from the early effects of global
warming. A leading candidate for such aid is Tuvalu. A Pacific atoll whose highest point is twelve feet above
sea level, Tuvalu was largely submerged last year by
ten foot tall 'king tides.' But the United States opposed the adaptation assistance, arguing that there is no
"certainty what constitutes a dangerous level of warming ... ."
Preparing to live through the global climate change now bearing down on our
civilization will be an enormous undertaking. It will require immense financial
resources, technical expertise and organizational skill. But perhaps what's
needed most of all, especially in the United States, is fresh thinking and political leadership - an
acceptance that climate change is inescapable and requires immediate counter-measures.
The unspeakable death and destruction wrought by the Indian Ocean tsunami showed what can happen when
people are unprepared for disaster. But there is no reason global warming
should take us by surprise. Our civilization's early warning system - the
scientists of the IPCC - have been telling us for years that great danger is
approaching.
The question is whether we will act quickly and decisively enough to protect
ourselves against the coming storm. Or will we simply stand and face our fate -
naked, proud and unafraid?
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.