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A renewed movement against climate change
By-Maswood Alam Khan from Maryland, USA
The Financial Express, 25 September 2014
Protestors make their way down Sixth Avenue in New York during the People's Climate March on Sunday.
Since the Copenhagen climate conference ended with a whimper in 2009, about 120 presidents
and prime ministers, including the prime minister of Bangladesh, have gathered again in a oneday Climate Change summit, this time at the United Nations in New York, in the hopes of
cobbling together some sort of a deal that could rein in greenhouse gas emissions. It is the first
time the subject has brought so many leaders together since the ill-fated Copenhagen summit.
But when global emissions reached an all-time high last year and are expected to grow even
more this year the absence at the summit of the leaders of China, India and several other key
countries do not bode well for the future of climate change movement. China is the biggest
source of greenhouse gas emissions in the world, and even its once-low per capita emissions
have now roared past European levels. India is also following a similar path to the one trod by
China in recent decades.
Last Sunday (September 21), observers were moved by "People's Climate March" that took place
in hundreds of cities around the world to urge policy makers to take action on climate change.
Nearly 400,000 people joined the March in New York, making it the largest climate march in
history. Accompanied by drumbeats and wearing costumes and carrying signs, banners, and flags
protesters at the "People's Climate March" overwhelmed the midtown Manhattan in flocks of
vivid colour, demanding action ahead of the United Nations Climate Summit. The two-mile-long
Climate March in New York, where dignitaries like U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and
former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and celebrities like Leonardo di Caprio and Mark Ruffalo
took part, dwarfed the previous climate marches that took place prior to the past climate
summits. Such huge marches, many believed, would breathe a new life into the United Nation's
green agenda.
Leaders of the world, including U.S. President Obama, delivered their passionate speeches on
Tuesday (September 23), demanding concerted actions to fight global warming.
But neither marches nor speeches yield policy. Most of the policy-makers by and large did not
assure of their firm commitments in reducing emissions at their own governments' levels. For all
the speeches at the summit and all the climate marches around the world a consensus needed to
forestall the worst effects of rising temperatures does not seem to be anywhere in the offing.
However, President Obama gave an impressive account of his country's investments in clean
energy and achievements in reducing carbon emissions. The United States, President Obama
informed the summit, now harnesses three times more electricity from the wind and ten times as
much from the sun since he came into office. He said that over the past eight years, the United
States has reduced their total carbon pollution by more than any other nation on Earth. He further
assured that America would reduce carbon emissions in the range of 17 per cent below 2005
levels by the year 2020.
Many governments are now facing a myriad of challenges to meet the basic needs of their people
as they confront resource constraints and they are worried about the global spread of diseases
and terrorism. But nobody seems to bother much about the apocalyptic dangers that are lurking
at the backyards of every nation, rich or poor.
Water shortages and fierce competition for food and energy will soon bedevil all the nations. The
growing impact of climate change is bound to heighten tensions among neighbours. The major
conflicts of the future, experts have presaged, would be sparked by climate change, not from
comparatively minor issues like the Islamic State or Ebola.
Worldwide, this summer was the hottest ever recorded - with global carbon emissions still on the
rise. The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has estimated that 650 million people
are living in areas where flood and droughts can lead to huge rises in food prices.
In the United States, the city of Miami now floods at high tide. Wildfire season in America now
stretches most of the year. Many farms in America have been parched by the worst drought in
generations, and drenched by the wettest spring in history. Scarcity of water has led to water
rationing in California. Yards of California homes have already turned yellow as residents have
been officially debarred from sprinkling water on their lawns to keep their grasses green.
Drought has led to lethal fighting among Somali clans for access to potable water.
The rising world population, coupled with the effects of pollution and climate change, has
already taxed many of the water systems that feed the world's people and are vital for agriculture.
But most of the world's wetlands have of late disappeared as a direct effect of global warming.
The climate change around the world has already altered weather patterns and led to water
shortages. Even in a country like Bangladesh which literally used to float on water and is
entwined by hundreds of rivers and canals the water levels at cities and rural areas are
plummeting at an accelerated pace and many rivers and beels (wetland) have already dried up,
turning huge swaths of lands parched and barren.
Everybody knows the climate change will ruin the habitability of this earth in a matter of years.
But nobody is sure whether anybody can really do anything substantially sustainable to stop the
climate from changing.
Climate changes so bit by bit that we don't perceive it on a daily or a monthly basis. But over the
last two and a half decades we have witnessed significant damages of the fabrics of this planet
that now shows up in sharp relief. We have come to learn from scientists that even small
increases in climate temperature can cause huge damages. All these damages have been caused
by the humans during the last one hundred and fifty years in order to satiate their present needs at
the exorbitant expense of the future generations.
World leaders' climate summit in New York starts a year of talks and deliberations aimed at
producing a treaty on carbon emissions to be signed in Paris at the end of 2015. In designing the
new treaty, politicians, environmentalists, thinkers, and journalists will present a host of
scientific analyses and derivatives throughout the year. They will debate over who has done what
and who should contribute how much in respect of reducing the greenhouse gases. They will
state policies and priorities that may rein in global warming. They will have to ascertain with
mathematical certainty how many tons of carbon dioxide can be saved by what measures by
what governments.
The collapse of the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009 and the lackadaisical summit on
Tuesday at the United Nations speak a volume about the inability of the global leaders to act
cooperatively in the face of clear scientific warnings about the threat our planet faces. It should
not be sensible to hope for anything dramatically positive happening in the Paris summit in 2015,
either.
Scores of summits and conferences to warn against impending climate catastrophes during the
last few decades have not gone in complete vain. There have been significant achievements in
reducing the carbon emission and slowing the global warming during the last few years, thanks
to some good policies of some good governments and the silent and strong will of some
visionary leaders.
China, America and the European Union (EU) spend $140 billion a year on subsidising
renewable energy that must have saved billions of tons of carbon emissions. Germany has been
generating three quarters of its power from renewable sources. One can estimate how many tons
of carbons have been saved by those fields and roofs full of solar cells and by those nuclear
plants and windmills by looking at the amount of electricity they have produced every year and
how much carbon would have been emitted if fossil fuels like coal, gas and oil had been used
instead.
We may have forgotten that compressors of air conditioners and refrigerators are no more filled
with chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Phasing out CFC has been possible for the famous Montreal
protocol, a 1987 agreement to phase out substances harmful to ozone layer. Stopping CFC
production, which was in the range of millions of tons a year, delivered a climate benefit
equivalent to cutting carbon-dioxide emissions by billions of tons. Similarly, energy from dams
and other hydroelectric sources avoided production of many other billion tons of greenhouse
gases. Making fuel-efficient and battery-powered cars and vehicles have also been contributing
in cutting emissions of greenhouse gases.
The world also must not underestimate the contributions the developing countries have made in
saving the production of a huge amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases through
different policies in respect of family planning and tree plantations. Had those countries not
succeeded in reducing the birthrate there would have been a few more billion people in the world
whose consumption of additional foods and goods could necessitate production of some more
billions of tons of carbon dioxide. Many countries have succeeded in declining deforestation by
massive tree plantations. Environmentalists should reckon how many billions of tons of carbon
dioxide those newly planted trees have absorbed. Bangladesh is one of those developing
countries to claim success.
Climate change needs to be tackled sooner rather than later as with days passing the cost for
actions will increase and no nation will be spared from the environmental and economic harms
the climate change will wreak. Environmentalists have already warned about the economic toll
from doing nothing against climate change. Each decade's delay in dealing with emissions will
add 40 per cent to the costs, resulting in larger deficits the national budgets will have to bear and
higher taxes every citizen will have to shoulder.
According to scientists, the temperature of our Earth has already been raised by one more degree.
If the rise of temperature continues at the current trajectory the Earth would be trembling with
temperature of additional four or five degrees before the century is out. We desperately need to
change that trajectory. Only God can say if that is still possible. We have waited too long to get
started. We have got to fight. The protestors have got to take to streets. The past quarter-century
should have taught us that at least.
Time is not far away when scarcity of water may spark off an unimaginable global conflict.
Already people who could assess the impending dangers out of climate crises have been flocking
to see movies and read books of a new genre called "cli-fi" (Climatic Fiction), with apocalyptic
climate-change scenarios at the heart of their plots.
But we should be prepared for the worst to happen and our scientists should also not place much
of their trust on the leaders of the world that they would do something great in saving the planet
from its doom. Given that the temperature will rise at its present rate and the ozone layer will be
porous with big holes, scientists have to find out ways how life can be adapted in such high
temperatures. Plants and lives capable of withstanding the climate change have to be genetically
engineered to stop the next mass extinction.
To an optimist, the march on Sunday in New York may mark the start of a renewed movement
against climate change. To a pessimist, the time ahead is dark, dull and bleak.
It is perhaps high time for the world leaders to watch more and more cli-fi movies and read more
and more cli-fi novels to be more and more aware of the impending threats that climate change
and global warming are going to present to life on Earth.
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