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POLITICS
Climate: What does the UN want?
Severe irreversible effects must be managed with stringent mitigation activities
Credit: © Shutterstock
If the UN is that single plant
struggling to survive, then the Asian
rainforest here represents how we
have desolated the earth with our
emissions and exploitation. Sustaining
that plant will need resources placed
in the hands of new technologies and
developing nations, with fossil fuels
removed from the great industrialists.
Their own resources must also be
used for cooperative and sustainable
developments
It is difficult to juggle every report
and come to conclusions about
exactly what needs to change
and who on earth will be willing
to change their levels of emission.
Climate change has almost run its full
cycle in people’s minds from incredulity
to tacit acceptance. The final step
is the most difficult. Everybody must
agree on certain steps that will result in
high initial costs and create new political
problems.
Ready for Paris 2015, Ban Ki-moon
has broken off his regular commenting
on various more local problems and
concentrated on Synthesis Report 5..
The IPCC livened up late last year with
their, coalition of ambition, in - COP 19
Warsaw’s COP19. Now they look likely to
continue with a 6th IPCC Report, despite
objections from some sources. Now their
key findings reveal huge concern that
human influence on climate systems
has increasing impact on every single
continent. The severe irreversible effects
must be managed with stringent mitigation
activities.
The IPCC 5th Assessment Report
is condensed into this report, after
their scientific and necessarily vast
assessment of climate change. It is obvious
that the biggest report ever does not
cause movement in itself, but the IPCC
Chair, R. K. Pachauri, believes, we have
the means to limit climate change.
Combine that hope with people’s
opinions that we must do something to
prevent any further effects of climate
change and there is a possibility of
political change. In the background is
the growing extent of greenhouse emissions
that must now be reduced. From
2000 to 2010, they were at their greatest
extent known.
We tend to agree now that greenhouse
gases are predominantly the
cause of our observed warming. With
the criminal emissions of large countries
such as the US and China, the warming
looks set to go on. Developing countries
have special restrictions on energy use
because they have few alternatives and
are given more time to remove fossil
fuels from their energy portfolios.
Many in fact find solar energy
especially a method by which they can
progress. In less sunny climes, there
are other future options or which we
all need to give international help. Mr
Pachauri in fact states that, “many
of those most vulnerable to climate
change have contributed and contribute
little to greenhouse gas emissions”.
The days of independence in individual
and even national action are
likely to be over. As ever, international
cooperation has been unpopular in
many quarters but it is the only possible
solution to this awesome problem.
Mitigation measures are claimed to limit
global warming to less than 2oC.
The end of the century should have
more or less zero emissions of any
greenhouse gas. To make this happen,
societal change will be necessary in
conjunction with new technologies.
City transport systems already seem
to be heading in that direction, where
personal transport, is prohibitive and
often impossible (without the familiar
pedal-power).
It would also be wrong to deny the
destruction wrought on the land by
many industrial style agricultural
and exploitation operations. Their
emissions and contributions to the
release of carbon from these precious
environments have become obsolete
in the world we need to rebuild. – www.
earthtimes.org
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november-december, green+.2014