Climate Change: Waiting for a Catastrophic Wake-Up Call
By Mario Osava*
The difficulties in reaching an agreement on emissions reductions, made
evident once again at Rio+20, could be solved by a climate disaster
destructive enough to sensitize the international community.
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 22 (Tierramérica).- Disasters are the new midwives
of history. But in order to play this role, they need to be
catastrophic, like the accidents in Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in
2011 that led governments to suspend and even abolish their nuclear
energy programs.
To spur real action on climate change, a disaster would have to be
serious enough to change people’s minds, but not so great as to be
uncontrollable, according to Martin Lees, Rector Emeritus of the United
Nations University for Peace,
“Urgent and deep cuts” in greenhouse gas emissions are needed to curb
global warming and its impacts, stresses the statement “Action to Face
the Urgent Realities of Climate Change”, presented at the United Nations
Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) by the Climate Change
Task Force (CCTF).
The CCTF was convened in 2009 by former Soviet president Mikhail
Gorbachev (1985-1991) and is made up by 20 former world leaders, climate
scientists and experts, including Lees.
Emissions are currently rising at a rate above the worst case scenario
foreseen by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which
projected an “intolerable” increase in global average temperature of
over six degrees by 2100.
However, IPCC scientists are probably “underestimating the pace and
intensity of climate change” due to caution and the complexities of peer
review, warns the CCTF statement.
Despite these warnings, the issue of climate change was barely addressed
at Rio+20, held in Rio de Janeiro 20 years after the Earth Summit hosted
by the same city. The outcomes of the 1992 summit included international
conventions on climate change, biodiversity and desertification.
Difficulties in reaching agreements and the failure of negotiations at
the meetings of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2009 in Copenhagen and 2010 in
Cancún have led government leaders to avoid the issue of the climate and
the polarization around it, Lees told Tierramérica. The most frequently
cited justification for this avoidance is the global economic and
financial crisis, which has mainly affected the countries of Europe, but
it is “an extremely dangerous error to think that we must deal with the
economy first, and the climate later,” says the CCTF, whose only Latin
American member is former Chilean president Ricardo Lagos (2000-2006).
While economic-financial crises are cyclical and have been surmounted
many times in the past, the climate crisis threatens irreversible and
uncontrollable change, argue the authors.
The urgency of deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions is accentuated by
the fact that the goal of limiting the increase in global average
temperature to two degrees will not necessarily keep the planet safe.
As the CCTF statement points out, the consequences of an initial rise of
only 0.8 degrees since pre-industrial times have already been
“alarming”.
Moreover, a global average rise of two degrees implies that some
critical regions of the world will experience a rise of four degrees, it
adds.
Even more troubling is the risk that certain systems are reaching a
“tipping point” at which feedback processes would be triggered, causing
sudden massive change.
The melting of Arctic sea ice means that more energy is absorbed by the
ocean, since there is less ice to reflect solar radiation. As a result,
the sea temperature rises even more, which in turn even further reduces
the area of ice, the statement notes.
As forests are destroyed and degraded, they absorb less carbon and
instead release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The local
temperature then rises and they degrade even further.
Increased carbon dioxide emissions have also led to a 30 percent
increase in ocean acidity in the last 200 years. This acidification
reduces the ocean’s capacity to absorb carbon, and so more carbon is
retained in the atmosphere, contributing to greater acidification as
well as climate change.
The seriousness of global warming is almost universally recognized, but
internationally agreed action is still lacking. This is what has spurred
the call to action by the Task Force, which positively assesses a number
of isolated initiatives, such as Sweden’s efforts to develop a
low-carbon economy, and the promotion of green technologies and
innovation in South Korea.
Yet Rio+20 did not “give proper attention to climate change,” rendering
all of the other problems and tasks addressed meaningless, lamented
Gorbachev.
The bureaucracy of the United Nations (UN) and difficult relations
between its agencies also contributed to keeping the issue off the
Rio+20 agenda. There has been a breakdown in the multilateral political
system, with “national greed” taking precedence over the global good and
giving a free hand to the unchecked overexploitation of natural
resources, commented Alexander Likhotal, president of Green Cross
International. The Climate Change Task Force recommends seven lines of
action, which include preserving “natural capital”, strengthening the
capacities of communities for climate change mitigation and adaptation,
and mobilizing the essential financial resources, both public and
private, as well as implementing deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
The climate crisis should be at the center of all efforts to ensure the
sustainable development of the planet, according to Likhotal. It seemed
to have achieved this status after the 1992 Earth Summit, with the
adoption of the framework convention, and the subsequent signing in 1997
of the Kyoto Protocol, which established concrete targets and
obligations, although it was never adopted by the United States.
Since then, international concern over climate change has fluctuated
over years. But awareness of its seriousness is on the rise once again,
as a result of extreme weather events, Likhotal observed.
Governments need to be pressured by society to adopt the necessary
measures and targets, said Samantha Smith, leader of the WWF Global
Climate and Energy Initiative, at a press conference at Rio+20. This is
what Brazilians did, she noted, to prevent further destruction through a
proposed amendment of the Forest Code, which is still being debated.
Tragedies like the landslides and floods that killed almost 1,000 people
last year in mountainous cities near Rio de Janeiro served as a strong
argument in favor of legislation that prevents deforestation.
But scattered local disasters, or impacts invisible to the average
citizen, such as the loss of biodiversity, are apparently still not
enough to motivate international policies and agreements.
The Fukushima accident, because of its enormity, succeeded in burying a
number of nuclear projects, at least temporarily. Yet nuclear energy had
already lost a great deal of support after Chernobyl, and it was in fact
the fears around fossil fuels and climate change that were largely
responsible for renewed support in more recent years.
“I’m afraid that only a major catastrophe, that would directly and
massively affect people’s lives, would force us to make the changes
needed,” said British biologist Jonathan Baillie in an interview with
TerraViva, the independent newspaper published by IPS at Rio+20.
* Additional reporting by Fabíola Ortiz (Rio de Janeiro).
Internal
links
World Bank: Latin America Has the Green Antidote Within Reach
Indigenous Message to Rio+20: Leave Everything Beneath Mother Earth
Activists Call for Creation of a High Commissioner for Future
Generations at Rio+20
Civil Society Determined to Have an Impact on Río+20
External links
TerraViva – Independent Rio+20
Newspaper
REFRAMING
RIO Special IPS coverage of Rio+20
United Nations
Conference on Sustainable Development
Rio+20: The Future We
Want
People’s Summit at Rio+20
University for Peace
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In This Issue...
Accents
Climate-Smart Agriculture to Reduce Vulnerability
Notable Writings
Rio+20 and Beyond: Together for a Sustainable Future
Notable Writings
Why Inclusive Green Growth Can Sustain Recent Gains in Latin America
Eco-briefs
CUBA: Promoting the Use of Solar Water Heaters...
CHILE: Community Demands Halt to Construction of Thermoelectric Plant...
HONDURAS: External Aid for Disasters and Security...
BRAZIL: Bio-Detergent Cleans Up Oil Spills ...
More Reports
Brazil Takes Steps to Confiscate Property of Landowners Using Slave
Labor
Indigenous Message to Rio+20: Leave Everything Beneath Mother Earth
Activists Call for Creation of a High Commissioner for Future
Generations at Rio+20
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