Download Gathering storm

Climate change/AM/PG/SON/JG
16/11/2007
16:01
Page 1
Gathering storm
The simple message in a recent UN report is
that Earth is in deep crisis, writes John Gibbons
“Imagine a world in which environmental
change threatens people’s health, physical
security, material needs and social cohesion.
This is a world beset by increasingly intense
and frequent storms, and by rising sea levels.
Some people experience extensive flooding,
while others endure intense droughts.
“Species extinction occurs at rates never
before witnessed. Safe water is increasingly
limited, hindering economic activity. Land
degradation endangers the lives of millions
of people.This is the world today.”
You could be forgiven for thinking the
above is yet another gloomy analysis of
the climate from some fringe ‘green’ group.
You would, however, be wrong.This is from
the introduction to the recently published
United Nations document ‘Global Environmental Outlook’ – or Geo-4.
It’s a massive document involving direct
input from more than a thousand leading
climate and environmental scientists. The
science may be complex, but the message
is abundantly simple: Earth is in deep crisis.
Climate change is just one of a range of
serious threats the planet is facing. Water
shortages, environmental degradation, the
alarming loss of biodiversity and the rapid
destruction of natural habitats combine to
place the planet in its most perilous
moment in tens of millions of years.
In the words of the UN Secretary General:“This assault on the global environment
risks undermining the many advances
human society has made in recent decades.
It is undercutting our fight against
poverty. It could even come to jeopardise
international peace and security”.
48
WIN December 2007 Vol 15 Iss 11
What is even more astonishing is the
“remarkable lack of urgency”, in the words
of the authors of Geo-4, in the world
response to this crisis. The publication of
this massive document coincides with the
20th anniversary of when the UN held its
landmark World Commission on Environment and Development back in 1987.
So what’s happened in the intervening
20 years? While Ireland has changed
almost beyond recognition in this period,
worldwide even more profound changes
have been accelerating. In 1987, the world
population was five billion. Twenty years
later, it has rocketed to 6.7 billion.
And all these extra mouths to feed have
placed huge pressures on the planet as a
whole and on all other forms of life on
earth. While the global economy has
expanded enormously in the last 20 years,
driven by globalisation, the price of this
frenzy of activity is being paid for by the
earth itself.
Water shortages
Geo-4 gloomily predicts that 1.8 billion
people will face critical water shortages by
2025, and it points out that three-quarters
of the world’s marine fisheries are already
exploited to and beyond their limits. The
world’s commercial fisheries are predicted
to have been effectively wiped out by
2050. Today, some two billion people
directly depend on fisheries for the bulk of
their food, so this collapse will mean widespread famine.
Back on land, farming has, in the last few
decades, become more and more productive, and crop yields have increased
dramatically to keep pace with growing
human demand for food. But this too has
been at a price: intensive farming practices have severely damaged huge areas
of land, leading to erosion, pollution and
desertification.
The heavy use of artificial fertilisers and
pesticides have increased the damage.
Many forms of modern agriculture, such as
cotton or beef production are extremely
water intensive. Much of this is being
tapped from large natural aquifers beneath
the ground. These are fast being rapidly
drained, and once emptied they will
remain empty.
As man’s needs and demands grow, so
vast areas of natural forest and wetlands
have been destroyed. Much of this land is
not suitable for intensive agriculture, and
so, in a matter of years, lush forests are
being turned into barren deserts.
Radical Shifts
And while humanity grapples with the
paradox of ‘sustainable development’
even darker clouds are gathering. Climate
change is now “visible and unequivocal”,
according to Geo-4. Right now, we are seeing the early warning signs of radical shifts
in climate patterns. Some, such as milder
winters in Ireland, may seem harmless,
even welcome, but these chaotic temperatures are already causing havoc for
animals and plants who rely on weather
signals to control critical functions, such as
when to migrate, hatch eggs or hibernate.
Rapidly rising global temperatures are
causing dramatic retreats of glaciers, rising
sea levels and disturbing evidence of
serious melting even on vast ice banks in
Greenland and Western Antarctica that
scientists until recently thought would be
stable for centuries.
Our best hope for stabilising the
planet’s temperature before runaway
heating becomes unstoppable lies in the
plants and microbes in the soil and in the
oceans which regulate natural systems.
But instead, Geo-4 cautions that we are
destroying the very creatures and systems
that offer us our best and only real longterm chance of heading off a climatedriven global catastrophe.
Things were bad in 1987; 20 years later,
they are much worse. What kind of world
might we envisage in 20 years’ time for
Geo-5 to report on?
For more, visit www.climatechange.ie