The Climate-Change Time Bomb
By Vandana Shiva*
communities, people living on small islands, peasant and pastoral
communities are the greatest victims of climate-linked disasters,
though they are the ones who have had the least role in climate
destabilization, says biotechnologist Vandana Shiva.
NEW DELHI - Fire has been central to human
evolution and to many of the world's religions. But when it moved
from hearths to industrial furnaces, and combustion engines became
the driving force of production, trade and transport, fire ceased
to be the great purifier and became the great polluter.
From then on, the CO2 produced by human activity
started to exceed the planet's capacity to absorb it.
Now climate instability in the form of more
extreme floods and droughts, more frequent heat waves and freezing
winters are the result of atmospheric pollution caused by wealthier
regions of the world and wealthier people.
Since 1950, the US has contributed 186.1 billion
tons of CO2, European Union 127.8, China 57.6 and India 15.5.
From 1850 to the mid-1990s, the global CO2
level of the atmosphere rose from 280 to 360 parts per million (ppm).
As the level of CO2 rises, more heat is trapped
by molecules of CO2, and global temperatures rise, creating climate
instability and threats to survival of humans and other species.
In addition to CO2, there are over a dozen over greenhouse gases.
The concentration of one of these, methane (CH4), has increased
from 0.7 parts per million four centuries ago to 1.7 ppm in 1988.
Recognizing that industrialization and the
age of petroleum had unleashed an unplanned experiment with the
atmosphere and climate, delegates from fifty countries met for the
first International Conference on the Changing Atmosphere in May
1988 to take steps to address the problem. An Inter-governmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established, and today is made
up of 2,500 scientists.
In June 1992, at the Earth Summit in Rio, 132
heads of state approved the Framework Convention on Climate Change
- a negotiating mechanism to promote agreement among all nations
on how to respond to the gathering climate threat. More than 160
countries have ratified it.
In December 1997, the delegates to the Climate
Change Convention met in Kyoto, Japan, to decide on targets and
timetables for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
However, the fossil fuel lobby obstructed commitments.
The United States had always been skeptical about the Kyoto agreement
to curb greenhouse gases. One of the first things US president George
W. Bush did in office was to declare in March that his country would
not support the agreement and to abandon his campaign pledge to
curb CO2 emissions from power plants.
This was his reasoning: "Our economy has slowed.
We also have an energy crisis, and the idea of placing caps on CO2
does not make economic sense."
Does it make economic sense to threaten millions
of lives and wipe out billions of assets?
The Global Commons Institute has calculated
that by 2005, the damage due to climate change might be 200 billion
dollars and by 2012 would reach 400 billion dollars. By 2050, the
damage caused to property could equal 20,000 billion dollars - the
value of all goods and services that humanity produces.
There is a very clear reason why insurance
companies are taking climate change seriously.
The small island states have been the most
persistent in demanding CO2 cuts from the industrialized countries.
They organized themselves as the Alliance of Small Island States
(AOSIS). Members of AOSIS know that severe hurricanes, intense rainstorms,
and sea level rise could flood them out of existence.
As Teburoro Tito, President of Kiribati in
the Pacific Islands states, "It's like little ants making a home
on a leaf floating on a pond, and the elephants go to drink and
roughhouse in the water. The problem isn't the ant's behavior. It's
a problem of law to convince the elephants to be more gentle."
While the ant and elephant metaphor is good
for illustrating climate injustice, climate change also threatens
the survival of the elephant who is roughing up the water.
Washington should realize that its refusal
to make any cutbacks could have disastrous effects on the country
- as well as the rest of the world. Rises in sea level would threaten
the East Coast of the United States, and its Gulf Coast states of
Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. The Environmental
Protection Agency calculates that a two-foot sea level rise would
wipe out 17 to 43 percent of US wetlands. Drought could wipe out
agriculture in the mid-west.
A sea-level rise of three feet would force
the evacuation of more than 70 million Chinese and 30 million Bangladeshis.
Floods, cyclones, droughts and heat waves are already threatening
the lives of millions.
The IPCC predicts an average increase of global
temperatures by 1.5 degrees centigrade to 6.0 degrees centigrade
by 2100. Associated with changes in temperature, sea level is projected
to increase by about 15-95 cm by 2100. The effects would be catastrophic.
We must act now to avert them.
* Vandana Shiva, biotechnologist, author
and international campaigner for women and the environment.