Economic Collapse And Global Ecology
By Dr. Glen Barry
14 January, 2008Earth Meanders
Given widespread failure to pursue policies sufficient to reverse deterioration of the biosphere and avoid ecological collapse, the best we can hope for may be that the growth-based economic system crashes sooner rather than later
Humanity and the Earth are faced with an enormous conundrum -- sufficient climate policies enjoy political support only in times of rapid economic growth. Yet this growth is the primary factor driving greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental ills. The growth machine has pushed the planet well beyond its ecological carrying capacity, and unless constrained, can only lead to human extinction and an end to complex life.
With every economic downturn, like the one now looming in the United States, it becomes more difficult and less likely that policy sufficient to ensure global ecological sustainability will be embraced. This essay explores the possibility that from a biocentric viewpoint of needs for long-term global ecological, economic and social sustainability; it would be better for the economic collapse to come now rather than later.
Economic growth is a deadly disease upon the Earth, with capitalism as its most virulent strain. Throw-away consumption and explosive population growth are made possible by using up fossil fuels and destroying ecosystems. Holiday shopping numbers are covered by media in the same breath as Arctic ice melt, ignoring their deep connection. Exponential economic growth destroys ecosystems and pushes the biosphere closer to failure.
Humanity has proven itself unwilling and unable to address climate change and other environmental threats with necessary haste and ambition. Action on coal, forests, population, renewable energy and emission reductions could be taken now at net benefit to the economy. Yet, the losers -- primarily fossil fuel industries and their bought oligarchy -- successfully resist futures not dependent upon their deadly products.
Perpetual economic growth, and necessary climate and other ecological policies, are fundamentally incompatible. Global ecological sustainability depends critically upon establishing a steady state economy, whereby production is right-sized to not diminish natural capital. Whole industries like coal and natural forest logging will be eliminated even as new opportunities emerge in solar energy and environmental restoration.
This critical transition to both economic and ecological sustainability is simply not happening on any scale. The challenge is how to carry out necessary environmental policies even as economic growth ends and consumption plunges. The natural response is going to be liquidation of even more life-giving ecosystems, and jettisoning of climate policies, to vainly try to maintain high growth and personal consumption.
We know that humanity must reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80% over coming decades. How will this and other necessary climate mitigation strategies be maintained during years of economic downturns, resource wars, reasonable demands for equitable consumption, and frankly, the weather being more pleasant in some places? If efforts to reduce emissions and move to a steady state economy fail; the collapse of ecological, economic and social systems is assured.
Bright greens take the continued existence of a habitable Earth with viable, sustainable populations of all species including humans as the ultimate truth and the meaning of life. Whether this is possible in a time of economic collapse is crucially dependent upon whether enough ecosystems and resources remain post collapse to allow humanity to recover and reconstitute sustainable, relocalized societies.
It may be better for the Earth and humanity's future that economic collapse comes sooner rather than later, while more ecosystems and opportunities to return to nature's fold exist. Economic collapse will be deeply wrenching -- part Great Depression, part African famine. There will be starvation and civil strife, and a long period of suffering and turmoil.
Many will be killed as balance returns to the Earth. Most people have forgotten how to grow food and that their identity is more than what they own. Yet there is some justice, in that those who have lived most lightly upon the land will have an easier time of it, even as those super-consumers living in massive cities finally learn where their food comes from and that ecology is the meaning of life. Economic collapse now means humanity and the Earth ultimately survive to prosper again.
Human suffering -- already the norm for many, but hitting the currently materially affluent -- is inevitable given the degree to which the planet's carrying capacity has been exceeded. We are a couple decades at most away from societal strife of a much greater magnitude as the Earth's biosphere fails. Humanity can take the bitter medicine now, and recover while emerging better for it; or our total collapse can be a final, fatal death swoon.
A successful revolutionary response to imminent global ecosystem collapse would focus upon bringing down the Earth's industrial economy now. As society continues to fail miserably to implement necessary changes to allow creation to continue, maybe the best strategy to achieve global ecological sustainability is economic sabotage to hasten the day. It is more fragile than it looks.
Humanity is a marvelous creation. Yet her current dilemma is unprecedented. It is not yet known whether she is able to adapt, at some expense to her comfort and short-term well-being, to ensure survival. If she can, all futures of economic, social and ecological collapse can be avoided. If not it is better from a long-term biocentric viewpoint that the economic growth machine collapse now, bringing forth the necessary change, and offering hope for a planetary and human revival.
I wish no harm to anyone, and want desperately to avoid these prophesies foretold by ecological science. I speak for the Earth, for despite being the giver of life, her natural voice remains largely unheard over the tumult of the end of being.
Friday, February 8, 2008
STOP GREENWASHING
Time To Stop The Greenwashing
By Glen Barry
05 January, 2008Earth Meanders
The Earth and all species including humans are threatened with imminent ecological ruin. You should be afraid, very afraid. Yet real hope remains that fundamental social change can avert looming failure of global ecosystems. The biggest current obstacle to such change is that now that everyone, every product and every business claims to be "green"; we have been diverted from urgent, adequate ecological change required to secure being.
Many mainstream (and some "radical") environmentalists, most businesses and essentially all governments are greenwashing -- misleading the public regarding the environmental benefits of their practices, policies and products. Certified FSC logging destroys ancient forests, climate and water. Coal is unlikely to ever be clean as existing plants emit into the atmosphere, and sequestration is unproven. Biofuels hurt the environment, geo-engineering will destroy remaining natural processes, and buying more stuff is rarely good for the environment.
It is time to stop the greenwashing. After two decades of successfully raising awareness regarding climate change, forest protection and other challenges to global ecological sustainability; increasingly my time is spent reacting to dangerous, insufficient responses that fail to address root causes of ecological decline, provide a false sense of action, and frequently consolidate and do more environmental harm.
Many "greenwash" to make money, some to be perceived as effective advocates, while others believe incremental progress without changing the system is the best that can be done. Yet all are delaying policies necessary simply to survive. The greatest obstacle to identifying, refining, espousing and implementing policies required to maintain a habitable Earth may come from "environmentalists" proposing inadequate half-measures that delay and undermine the rigorous work that must be done to bring humanity back into nature's fold.
Sufficient policies required to save the Earth are massive in scope and ambition. Deep-seated change is required in how we house, feed and clothe ourselves; in our understanding of acceptable livelihoods and happy lives; and in our relationship with the biosphere and each other. To maintain a livable Earth there is no alternative to less people and consumption, a smaller and restorative economy, and an end to cutting natural vegetation and burning fossil fuels.
Systematic failure of global ecosystems and social systems must be addressed in more than a token manner. A whole series of policy actions exist that we know are needed, would work, are sufficient, and could start immediately. These include massive investments into subsidizing renewable energy, implementing population controls, banning coal, ending old-growth logging and financing carbon emission reductions.
Given the Earth has already exceeded what can be sustained in these regards, not only must the destruction stop, but massive regional scale ecological restoration must commence to establish rewilded and connected ecological reserves. Economic growth beyond steady-state use of natural capital must be stopped, and sustainable relocalized communities built around bioregions.
Certainly ecologically positive technology has a role to play. Living in the country and needing a vehicle I recently chose the best transportation option society offers me and bought a Toyota Prius. But leading environmentalists touting technology as the primary emphasis to save our environment are dreadfully misinformed, and are obviously unaware of the ecological nature of being. They seem to have forgotten about the primacy of maintaining and restoring ecosystems.
Even as we personally strive to live frugal, rich lives; necessary consumption should focus upon durable items that will last. Strong tools and minds are required to grow food, make a righteous living, and otherwise practice ecological living. Excessive consumption is a poor substitute for a truthful, fully aware, knowledge filled and experience rich life. All can and should enjoy some luxuries, rather than some enjoying all.
Global ecological threats are intensifying -- oceans lifeless, forests tattered, water scarce, and the atmosphere perhaps irreparably damaged. This occurs even as a climate change backlash builds, largely as a result of truthful apocalyptic warnings presented without adequate policies that go beyond greenwash responses and actually promise a hope filled solution likely and able to succeed.
Given this increased urgency and public awareness, the environmental community must espouse rigorous, sufficient polices "while the iron is hot" and demand real actions that are sufficient to solve global ecological crises. And greenwashers beware: if you stand in the way of sufficient ecological responses to the greatest emergency of all times, you will be exposed as Earth charlatans and resisted.
By Glen Barry
05 January, 2008Earth Meanders
The Earth and all species including humans are threatened with imminent ecological ruin. You should be afraid, very afraid. Yet real hope remains that fundamental social change can avert looming failure of global ecosystems. The biggest current obstacle to such change is that now that everyone, every product and every business claims to be "green"; we have been diverted from urgent, adequate ecological change required to secure being.
Many mainstream (and some "radical") environmentalists, most businesses and essentially all governments are greenwashing -- misleading the public regarding the environmental benefits of their practices, policies and products. Certified FSC logging destroys ancient forests, climate and water. Coal is unlikely to ever be clean as existing plants emit into the atmosphere, and sequestration is unproven. Biofuels hurt the environment, geo-engineering will destroy remaining natural processes, and buying more stuff is rarely good for the environment.
It is time to stop the greenwashing. After two decades of successfully raising awareness regarding climate change, forest protection and other challenges to global ecological sustainability; increasingly my time is spent reacting to dangerous, insufficient responses that fail to address root causes of ecological decline, provide a false sense of action, and frequently consolidate and do more environmental harm.
Many "greenwash" to make money, some to be perceived as effective advocates, while others believe incremental progress without changing the system is the best that can be done. Yet all are delaying policies necessary simply to survive. The greatest obstacle to identifying, refining, espousing and implementing policies required to maintain a habitable Earth may come from "environmentalists" proposing inadequate half-measures that delay and undermine the rigorous work that must be done to bring humanity back into nature's fold.
Sufficient policies required to save the Earth are massive in scope and ambition. Deep-seated change is required in how we house, feed and clothe ourselves; in our understanding of acceptable livelihoods and happy lives; and in our relationship with the biosphere and each other. To maintain a livable Earth there is no alternative to less people and consumption, a smaller and restorative economy, and an end to cutting natural vegetation and burning fossil fuels.
Systematic failure of global ecosystems and social systems must be addressed in more than a token manner. A whole series of policy actions exist that we know are needed, would work, are sufficient, and could start immediately. These include massive investments into subsidizing renewable energy, implementing population controls, banning coal, ending old-growth logging and financing carbon emission reductions.
Given the Earth has already exceeded what can be sustained in these regards, not only must the destruction stop, but massive regional scale ecological restoration must commence to establish rewilded and connected ecological reserves. Economic growth beyond steady-state use of natural capital must be stopped, and sustainable relocalized communities built around bioregions.
Certainly ecologically positive technology has a role to play. Living in the country and needing a vehicle I recently chose the best transportation option society offers me and bought a Toyota Prius. But leading environmentalists touting technology as the primary emphasis to save our environment are dreadfully misinformed, and are obviously unaware of the ecological nature of being. They seem to have forgotten about the primacy of maintaining and restoring ecosystems.
Even as we personally strive to live frugal, rich lives; necessary consumption should focus upon durable items that will last. Strong tools and minds are required to grow food, make a righteous living, and otherwise practice ecological living. Excessive consumption is a poor substitute for a truthful, fully aware, knowledge filled and experience rich life. All can and should enjoy some luxuries, rather than some enjoying all.
Global ecological threats are intensifying -- oceans lifeless, forests tattered, water scarce, and the atmosphere perhaps irreparably damaged. This occurs even as a climate change backlash builds, largely as a result of truthful apocalyptic warnings presented without adequate policies that go beyond greenwash responses and actually promise a hope filled solution likely and able to succeed.
Given this increased urgency and public awareness, the environmental community must espouse rigorous, sufficient polices "while the iron is hot" and demand real actions that are sufficient to solve global ecological crises. And greenwashers beware: if you stand in the way of sufficient ecological responses to the greatest emergency of all times, you will be exposed as Earth charlatans and resisted.
GLOBAL WARMING-STOP ARGUING-- TAKE ACTION NOW
Global Warming - Stop Arguing - Take Action Now
By Ron Campbell
21 January, 2008Countercurrents.org
As mankind faces the most dramatic natural disaster in history we are squabbling instead of taking action. We need to stop arguing, come up with a plan and take action NOW.
Our poles are melting, temperature and weather patterns are changing. Those are facts. Whose fault it is, man made or natural is almost irrelevant. The important thing is that we take action to prepare for the unavoidable consequences of climate change NOW.
Past climate changes have happened quick, the most recent having taken only about a decade. We have seen weather patterns change over the last few years, lost a bunch of ice, witnessed massive amounts of species going extinct and see a slow-down of the ocean’s conveyor which regulates temperature patterns around the globe. My gut feeling is to say that we are in the midst of climate change. Whether it’s caused by CO2, an active sun or any other cause is not the issue. The issue is… we can’t change, avert or avoid it so we have to figure out how to deal with it and survive it’s effects.
The focal point of all the issues surrounding climate change is energy. More specifically, present and future energy. The energy we currently use, which most say changes the climate, and the energy we will need in the future to supply more people and to stave off the effects of a changed climate. We need cleaner fuel now, not only because of pollution or the fact that we are running out, but because we will need much more fuel in the future.
The world economy is currently dependant upon CO2 emitting fossil fuels and we won’t just be able to throw a switch to convert to another source so we have to start now. We have to stop spending billions fighting over the remaining oil. No matter who owns it, we will use it up. As demand increases and supply dwindles it will become more expensive and economic factors will dictate that we replace it. If we’re lucky, mankind will be reasonable enough to spend more money finding new energy sources than fighting over obsolete ones. That’s a long shot but there’s always hope.
We will need more energy and there is no denying that burning oil and coal pollutes our planet. We have 2 choices if we want to survive as a species.
1. Come up with more, preferably cleaner energy.
2. Shrink our global population to a size that our current energy supply can sustain.
The first is preferable but considering our primitive human nature, the second is more probable. Let’s let common sense overpower human nature and strive towards option 1.
Think about it. There are many sources of energy, known and yet to be discovered that we can use. Wind, water, tidal, and solar are clean technologies that we have explored and can improve. We have started tinkering with ways to use the Earth’s magnetic field. There is gravity and countless types of cosmic rays that we haven’t even tried to harness yet. Nuclear has been around for decades and if it doesn’t blow up on you, it is extremely clean.
My suggestion, no, my demand is that mankind stop it’s economic and religious squabbling and start taking the action we need for our survival as a species. It will be impossible to get mankind to act as one, but someone has to start. If the US trimmed it’s government and military to a minimum, keeping enough troops and nukes to sustain sovereignty, we could save billions and use it to develop energy sources.
That scenario might even be good for the economy. Imagine all of the workers needed to make electric cars or cosmic ray powered toasters. Besides, whoever discovers a technology usually has a lead when it comes to selling it’s usage or the products it spins off.
New energy won’t solve global warming but it will help us deal with it better. Right now it’s the only option we have so let’s get on it!
Leave A Comment &
By Ron Campbell
21 January, 2008Countercurrents.org
As mankind faces the most dramatic natural disaster in history we are squabbling instead of taking action. We need to stop arguing, come up with a plan and take action NOW.
Our poles are melting, temperature and weather patterns are changing. Those are facts. Whose fault it is, man made or natural is almost irrelevant. The important thing is that we take action to prepare for the unavoidable consequences of climate change NOW.
Past climate changes have happened quick, the most recent having taken only about a decade. We have seen weather patterns change over the last few years, lost a bunch of ice, witnessed massive amounts of species going extinct and see a slow-down of the ocean’s conveyor which regulates temperature patterns around the globe. My gut feeling is to say that we are in the midst of climate change. Whether it’s caused by CO2, an active sun or any other cause is not the issue. The issue is… we can’t change, avert or avoid it so we have to figure out how to deal with it and survive it’s effects.
The focal point of all the issues surrounding climate change is energy. More specifically, present and future energy. The energy we currently use, which most say changes the climate, and the energy we will need in the future to supply more people and to stave off the effects of a changed climate. We need cleaner fuel now, not only because of pollution or the fact that we are running out, but because we will need much more fuel in the future.
The world economy is currently dependant upon CO2 emitting fossil fuels and we won’t just be able to throw a switch to convert to another source so we have to start now. We have to stop spending billions fighting over the remaining oil. No matter who owns it, we will use it up. As demand increases and supply dwindles it will become more expensive and economic factors will dictate that we replace it. If we’re lucky, mankind will be reasonable enough to spend more money finding new energy sources than fighting over obsolete ones. That’s a long shot but there’s always hope.
We will need more energy and there is no denying that burning oil and coal pollutes our planet. We have 2 choices if we want to survive as a species.
1. Come up with more, preferably cleaner energy.
2. Shrink our global population to a size that our current energy supply can sustain.
The first is preferable but considering our primitive human nature, the second is more probable. Let’s let common sense overpower human nature and strive towards option 1.
Think about it. There are many sources of energy, known and yet to be discovered that we can use. Wind, water, tidal, and solar are clean technologies that we have explored and can improve. We have started tinkering with ways to use the Earth’s magnetic field. There is gravity and countless types of cosmic rays that we haven’t even tried to harness yet. Nuclear has been around for decades and if it doesn’t blow up on you, it is extremely clean.
My suggestion, no, my demand is that mankind stop it’s economic and religious squabbling and start taking the action we need for our survival as a species. It will be impossible to get mankind to act as one, but someone has to start. If the US trimmed it’s government and military to a minimum, keeping enough troops and nukes to sustain sovereignty, we could save billions and use it to develop energy sources.
That scenario might even be good for the economy. Imagine all of the workers needed to make electric cars or cosmic ray powered toasters. Besides, whoever discovers a technology usually has a lead when it comes to selling it’s usage or the products it spins off.
New energy won’t solve global warming but it will help us deal with it better. Right now it’s the only option we have so let’s get on it!
Leave A Comment &
POVERTY SUCKS, THE EARTH AND SOUL
. Poverty Sucks, The Earth And The Soul
By Dr. Glen Barry
02 December, 2007Earth Meanders
The rich are richer and the poor, poorer -- even as the Earth they share shrivels and dies. Billions live a life of misery on a dollar or two a day, as a sizeable minority enjoys creature comforts fit for kings of old, and a relative few with more wealth then entire nations live in unimagined splendor.
The Earth is alive and 3.5 billion years old. Humanity is one of her newer and apparently short-lived members. In losing our oneness with the Earth, we have embraced the dismantling of her life-support system as a means to feed, house and clothe ourselves. We live as if climate, forests, oceans and water have no value other than as resources to be destroyed for money.
First colonial Europe, then militant America and now China and India Inc. together constitute a spreading economic cancer upon the Earth's natural habitats. Each adheres to ever growing populations and economies destroying ecological systems for, at this point, a few decades of throw away consumption, based upon various national "isms" that are all ecologically lacking.
Humanity is well along the path of cutting and burning ourselves to oblivion. The combined filth from centuries of burning fossil fuels and clearing native vegetation -- primitive practices that continue to this day -- is causing the climate and global ecology to not only change, but collapse.
Widespread poverty makes environmental protection nearly impossible, stymies souls and is deeply unethical. As well-off policy-makers ignore global inequities and suffering while seeking vainly to maintain consuming and polluting as a way of life for the rich, we ensure soon everyone will be poor, and then humanity, and perhaps the Earth, dead (or essentially so).
It is grotesque that global cooperative efforts to address climate change have been delayed because of the rich West's failure to understand history and ecology, and unwillingness to accept the principle of equity. And the not yet over-developed world's inability, particularly the elites, to note and reject failed development schemes for short term material gains.
It is time to get past ecological denial, fear and anger; and move forward with radical cooperative ecological change based upon ecological truth and social need. Creation is at stake.
There is perhaps Bali and a few years to get policy right to reduce emissions and avoid total global ecological decline through cooperative international policy-making. Past that, only painful revolutionary responses could possibly slay the growth machine and maintain an intact and fully operable biosphere. Barring these, the global ecosystem fails.
It is appalling that nations like the United States cannot understand the equity and justice implications of climate change. How can they sleep after a decade of obstruction equating a starving villager polluting a bit more a bit longer to emerge from poverty, with their right to drive SUVs and grow their economy endlessly?
The United States and Europe practice the most evil systems of ecological destruction the world has ever seen, and they must pay with immediate deep emission cuts far into the future.
Yet their destructive way of life has become the desired global norm and "developing" nations are rapidly catching up. China and India's exploding populations import emissions while exporting goods. And tropical forested countries such as Brazil and Indonesia have failed miserably to keep their rainforests intact and carbon in place. Increasingly climate blame is shared.
Please consider these modest suggestions my contribution to the Bali climate conference. Climate change is so advanced that all nations must agree to mandatorily reduce their greenhouse gas emissions as the most urgent task ever undertaken by humanity.
Equity and justice dictates rich nations will contribute more in total and speed to emissions cuts, yet poor and developing nations suffer the most from global heating, and must not expect to follow the same failed and deadly development policies. Poverty associated with reduced emissions is preferable to that from failing ecosystems to which there is no adapting.
Clearly a global deal must apportion emission reduction responsibilities -- perhaps 50% to traditional rich developed countries, 30% to the newly industrial super-economies and 20% to others. Far greater minds have proposed similar things in economic terms, Google information on "contraction and convergence".
Further, to commit to 80% cuts in emissions by 2050 without more immediate goals is meaningless. Targets under Kyoto's successor must be ambitious and pulled forward. Given our understanding that climate change has become abrupt and potentially run-way, we need commitments starting within a year for 30% cuts by 2015. And then the strategy, funding and adaptive management to do so.
The only way forward in Bali is to embrace sizable emission cuts that include all nations, even as rich nations are called upon to do more, and all pledges are front loaded. This is the only type of framework within which a deal could possibly be reached that will be effective in stopping climate change.
Poverty, inequity, injustice and climate change are deeply related. There is little possibility of saving the Earth through emission reductions, and otherwise working to achieve global ecological sustainability, unless we also work for a just and equitable world free from poverty.
By Dr. Glen Barry
02 December, 2007Earth Meanders
The rich are richer and the poor, poorer -- even as the Earth they share shrivels and dies. Billions live a life of misery on a dollar or two a day, as a sizeable minority enjoys creature comforts fit for kings of old, and a relative few with more wealth then entire nations live in unimagined splendor.
The Earth is alive and 3.5 billion years old. Humanity is one of her newer and apparently short-lived members. In losing our oneness with the Earth, we have embraced the dismantling of her life-support system as a means to feed, house and clothe ourselves. We live as if climate, forests, oceans and water have no value other than as resources to be destroyed for money.
First colonial Europe, then militant America and now China and India Inc. together constitute a spreading economic cancer upon the Earth's natural habitats. Each adheres to ever growing populations and economies destroying ecological systems for, at this point, a few decades of throw away consumption, based upon various national "isms" that are all ecologically lacking.
Humanity is well along the path of cutting and burning ourselves to oblivion. The combined filth from centuries of burning fossil fuels and clearing native vegetation -- primitive practices that continue to this day -- is causing the climate and global ecology to not only change, but collapse.
Widespread poverty makes environmental protection nearly impossible, stymies souls and is deeply unethical. As well-off policy-makers ignore global inequities and suffering while seeking vainly to maintain consuming and polluting as a way of life for the rich, we ensure soon everyone will be poor, and then humanity, and perhaps the Earth, dead (or essentially so).
It is grotesque that global cooperative efforts to address climate change have been delayed because of the rich West's failure to understand history and ecology, and unwillingness to accept the principle of equity. And the not yet over-developed world's inability, particularly the elites, to note and reject failed development schemes for short term material gains.
It is time to get past ecological denial, fear and anger; and move forward with radical cooperative ecological change based upon ecological truth and social need. Creation is at stake.
There is perhaps Bali and a few years to get policy right to reduce emissions and avoid total global ecological decline through cooperative international policy-making. Past that, only painful revolutionary responses could possibly slay the growth machine and maintain an intact and fully operable biosphere. Barring these, the global ecosystem fails.
It is appalling that nations like the United States cannot understand the equity and justice implications of climate change. How can they sleep after a decade of obstruction equating a starving villager polluting a bit more a bit longer to emerge from poverty, with their right to drive SUVs and grow their economy endlessly?
The United States and Europe practice the most evil systems of ecological destruction the world has ever seen, and they must pay with immediate deep emission cuts far into the future.
Yet their destructive way of life has become the desired global norm and "developing" nations are rapidly catching up. China and India's exploding populations import emissions while exporting goods. And tropical forested countries such as Brazil and Indonesia have failed miserably to keep their rainforests intact and carbon in place. Increasingly climate blame is shared.
Please consider these modest suggestions my contribution to the Bali climate conference. Climate change is so advanced that all nations must agree to mandatorily reduce their greenhouse gas emissions as the most urgent task ever undertaken by humanity.
Equity and justice dictates rich nations will contribute more in total and speed to emissions cuts, yet poor and developing nations suffer the most from global heating, and must not expect to follow the same failed and deadly development policies. Poverty associated with reduced emissions is preferable to that from failing ecosystems to which there is no adapting.
Clearly a global deal must apportion emission reduction responsibilities -- perhaps 50% to traditional rich developed countries, 30% to the newly industrial super-economies and 20% to others. Far greater minds have proposed similar things in economic terms, Google information on "contraction and convergence".
Further, to commit to 80% cuts in emissions by 2050 without more immediate goals is meaningless. Targets under Kyoto's successor must be ambitious and pulled forward. Given our understanding that climate change has become abrupt and potentially run-way, we need commitments starting within a year for 30% cuts by 2015. And then the strategy, funding and adaptive management to do so.
The only way forward in Bali is to embrace sizable emission cuts that include all nations, even as rich nations are called upon to do more, and all pledges are front loaded. This is the only type of framework within which a deal could possibly be reached that will be effective in stopping climate change.
Poverty, inequity, injustice and climate change are deeply related. There is little possibility of saving the Earth through emission reductions, and otherwise working to achieve global ecological sustainability, unless we also work for a just and equitable world free from poverty.
GREEN HOUSE GASES
Cut GhGs Or Face Extreme Events - Scientists
By Imelda Abano
07 December, 2007Inter Press Service
NUSA DUA, Bali, Dec 7 (IPS) - Scientists attending a major United Nations conference on climate change on this Indonesian resort island warn that unless greenhouse gas (GhG) emissions are contained extreme geo-climatic events are only expectable.
Some 200 climatologists and scientific experts gathered for the 11-day conference, that began Monday under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), have issued a ‘Bali Declaration’ that urges negotiators from 180 nations to agree to reduce GhG emissions to 50 percent of 1990 levels by the year 2050.
Global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other GhGs need to decline over the next 10-15 years if heat waves, droughts, floods and storms are not to intensify, said the scientists in the declaration sponsored by the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.
At risk, the declaration issued Thursday said, are coastal settlements, urban conglomerations and ecosystems with several plant and animal species facing serious danger of extinction in a business-as-usual scenario.
One of the signatories, Prof. Richard Sommerville of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, San Diego, United States, told IPS: "Climate change is real and there is no time to lose. All nations have the responsibility to act now before Kyoto (Protocol) expires in 2012.’’
Sommerville said the scientists’ group had no suggestions to offer at the Bali negotiations beyond what was contained in the declaration, the thrust of which was that the outcome of this conference should work to stop and reverse global warming.
"Climate science continues to say that environmental changes are occurring faster than even the best climate models have projected. Negotiations, here in Bali, must start the process of reaching a new global agreement that sets strong binding targets and includes the vast majority of the nations of the world," Sommerville stressed.
"Urgent international action must be taken in Bali considering the extreme weather-related disasters events are already happening in developing as well as industrialised countries," Sommerville added.
Environmental activists that IPS spoke with said they hoped Bali will deliver a general agreement to cut emissions substantially by 2050.
"We urge all governments to support negotiations on a post-Kyoto agreement for a stronger climate regime to further reduce their emissions by 80 percent by 2050," said Ramon Faustino Sales, convenor of the Philippines Network on Climate Change (PNCC), an alliance of non-government organisations (NGOs) that deals with advocacy on climate change and sustainable development issues.
UNFCCC executive secretary Yvo de Boer said he is optimistic that the Bali summit leaders would produce a mechanism to establish new commitment to the Kyoto agreement. "Parties need to create the 'tool box' that can reduce emissions cost-effectively and enable economic growth. The final step of the two-year negotiating process will be to define targets and the type of legal instruments that is needed to make the new international deal work," he told reporters.
De Boer expected the conference to make a proposed adaptation fund operational, "so that perhaps in as little as a year, real resources for adaptation can begin to flow to developing countries’’. ’The fund is expected to finance climate change projects ranging from building sea walls to guard against surging oceans and improved water supply to drought-hit areas to training in new agricultural techniques.
The adaptation fund is based on a two percent levy on the Kyoto Protocol's clean development mechanism (CDM) projects. By 2012, when the protocol comes to an end, the fund could grow to around 300 million US dollars per year.
Drawing upwards of 10,000 participants, the conference covers four core issues; ways to reach a consensus on climate adaptation, mitigation to curb sources of GhG emissions, transfer of technology from developed to developing countries and a financing scheme to curb the impacts of climate change.
In order to encourage processes, host Indonesia has set up meetings for trade ministers on Dec. 8-9 and finance ministers on Dec. 10-11, before environment ministers hold a wrap up session on Dec.12-14.
Its best possible outcome would be a ‘Bali Roadmap,’ an action plan for an agreement by 2009 that would include more countries making commitments to cut emissions and broaden the scope of the Kyoto Protocol to include emissions from deforestation, said Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, chairwoman of the U.N. Working Group on Indigenous People.
And the worst possible outcome? That, according to Hans Verolme, climate change director with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) -- which is pushing 30 percent reduction target by 2020 -- would include the negotiations coming up with yet another ‘’vague statement acknowledging the problem, but offering no concrete plan’’
( COUNTER CURRENTS)
By Imelda Abano
07 December, 2007Inter Press Service
NUSA DUA, Bali, Dec 7 (IPS) - Scientists attending a major United Nations conference on climate change on this Indonesian resort island warn that unless greenhouse gas (GhG) emissions are contained extreme geo-climatic events are only expectable.
Some 200 climatologists and scientific experts gathered for the 11-day conference, that began Monday under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), have issued a ‘Bali Declaration’ that urges negotiators from 180 nations to agree to reduce GhG emissions to 50 percent of 1990 levels by the year 2050.
Global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other GhGs need to decline over the next 10-15 years if heat waves, droughts, floods and storms are not to intensify, said the scientists in the declaration sponsored by the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.
At risk, the declaration issued Thursday said, are coastal settlements, urban conglomerations and ecosystems with several plant and animal species facing serious danger of extinction in a business-as-usual scenario.
One of the signatories, Prof. Richard Sommerville of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, San Diego, United States, told IPS: "Climate change is real and there is no time to lose. All nations have the responsibility to act now before Kyoto (Protocol) expires in 2012.’’
Sommerville said the scientists’ group had no suggestions to offer at the Bali negotiations beyond what was contained in the declaration, the thrust of which was that the outcome of this conference should work to stop and reverse global warming.
"Climate science continues to say that environmental changes are occurring faster than even the best climate models have projected. Negotiations, here in Bali, must start the process of reaching a new global agreement that sets strong binding targets and includes the vast majority of the nations of the world," Sommerville stressed.
"Urgent international action must be taken in Bali considering the extreme weather-related disasters events are already happening in developing as well as industrialised countries," Sommerville added.
Environmental activists that IPS spoke with said they hoped Bali will deliver a general agreement to cut emissions substantially by 2050.
"We urge all governments to support negotiations on a post-Kyoto agreement for a stronger climate regime to further reduce their emissions by 80 percent by 2050," said Ramon Faustino Sales, convenor of the Philippines Network on Climate Change (PNCC), an alliance of non-government organisations (NGOs) that deals with advocacy on climate change and sustainable development issues.
UNFCCC executive secretary Yvo de Boer said he is optimistic that the Bali summit leaders would produce a mechanism to establish new commitment to the Kyoto agreement. "Parties need to create the 'tool box' that can reduce emissions cost-effectively and enable economic growth. The final step of the two-year negotiating process will be to define targets and the type of legal instruments that is needed to make the new international deal work," he told reporters.
De Boer expected the conference to make a proposed adaptation fund operational, "so that perhaps in as little as a year, real resources for adaptation can begin to flow to developing countries’’. ’The fund is expected to finance climate change projects ranging from building sea walls to guard against surging oceans and improved water supply to drought-hit areas to training in new agricultural techniques.
The adaptation fund is based on a two percent levy on the Kyoto Protocol's clean development mechanism (CDM) projects. By 2012, when the protocol comes to an end, the fund could grow to around 300 million US dollars per year.
Drawing upwards of 10,000 participants, the conference covers four core issues; ways to reach a consensus on climate adaptation, mitigation to curb sources of GhG emissions, transfer of technology from developed to developing countries and a financing scheme to curb the impacts of climate change.
In order to encourage processes, host Indonesia has set up meetings for trade ministers on Dec. 8-9 and finance ministers on Dec. 10-11, before environment ministers hold a wrap up session on Dec.12-14.
Its best possible outcome would be a ‘Bali Roadmap,’ an action plan for an agreement by 2009 that would include more countries making commitments to cut emissions and broaden the scope of the Kyoto Protocol to include emissions from deforestation, said Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, chairwoman of the U.N. Working Group on Indigenous People.
And the worst possible outcome? That, according to Hans Verolme, climate change director with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) -- which is pushing 30 percent reduction target by 2020 -- would include the negotiations coming up with yet another ‘’vague statement acknowledging the problem, but offering no concrete plan’’
( COUNTER CURRENTS)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)