The rich World's policy on greenhouse gas now seems clear: Millions will die

international | environment | other press

Wednesday May 02, 2007 12:34

by Terence

Capitalism has no real answer for climate chaos.

In this article by George Monbiot, he spells out what is going on politically with Climate Change and states that they are aware of the real depth of changes required which they have purposely avoided and instead have committed to much less drastic changes which will have the effect of condemning millions to die.

It would seem what he has identified is that the body of capitalism of which the current crop of political leaders are the stewards, is unable and unwilling to make the neccessary changes, because it inherently recognises that this would be a challenge to the system itself. It looks like they plan to somehow muddle through, but unfortunately muddling through this problem is not the easy option it normally is.

In the article, Monbiot opens with:

Rich nations seeking to cut climate change have this in common: they lie. You won't find this statement in ... ....But as soon as you understand the numbers, the words form before your eyes. The governments making genuine efforts to tackle global warming are using figures they know to be false

And remember many governments are not making genuine efforts but merely spouting green spin. He futher expands on this:

The aim of preventing more than 2C of warming has been adopted overtly by the UN and the European Union, and implicitly by the British, German and Swedish governments. All of them say they are hoping to confine the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to a level that would prevent such a rise. And all of them know that they have set the wrong targets, based on outdated science. Fearful of the political implications, they have failed to adjust to the levels the new research demands.

He then goes on to outline some of the figures and talks about the very important but rarely mentioned carbon dixoide equivalent levels which includes other gases such as Methane.

This isn't easy to follow, but please bear with me, as you cannot understand the world's most important issue without grappling with some numbers. The average global temperature is affected by the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This concentration is usually expressed as "carbon dioxide equivalent". It is not an exact science .....
.... - but scientists discuss the relationship in terms of probability. A paper published last year by the climatologist Malte Meinshausen suggests that if greenhouse gases reach a concentration of 550 parts per million, carbon dioxide equivalent, there is a 63-99% chance (with an average value of 82%) that global warming will exceed two degrees. At 475 parts per million (ppm) the average likelihood is 64%. Only if concentrations are stabilised at 400 parts or below is there a low chance (an average of 28%) that temperatures will rise by more than two degrees.

The IPCC's draft report contains similar figures.....
..... You begin to understand the scale of the challenge when you discover that the current level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (using the IPCC's formula) is 459ppm. We have already exceeded the safe level. To give ourselves a high chance of preventing dangerous climate change, we will need a programme so drastic that greenhouse gases in the atmosphere end up below the current concentrations...

And then he points out that the current targets set are above what are the carbon equivalent levels we should be at to avoid 2C. As can be seen above our current level of 459 is very close to 475, considering it is rising by about 2 to 3 annually.

But no government has set itself this task. The European Union and the Swedish government have established the world's most stringent target. It is 550ppm, which gives us a near certainty of an extra 2C

Further on he then goes on to explain that some of the estimates for emission cuts given in his book, Heat, are mistaken and were underestimated, thereby making the situation more urgent. He closes the article with this statement:

But our governments appear quietly to have abandoned their aim of preventing dangerous climate change. If so, they condemn millions to death. What the IPCC report shows is that we have to stop treating climate change as an urgent issue. We have to start treating it as an international emergency.

Full article is available at either http://www.monbiot.com/ or the URL below