Green Plus Issu 14

MARITIME
Going Green in the
blue sea
In the wake of the landmark COP 21 agreement,
Nazery Khalid
climate change
NAZERY KHALID is Honorary
Secretary of Association of
Marine Industries of Malaysia
(AMIM). He can be contacted at
nazerykhalid@gmail.com
FEELING THE HEAT OF
CLIMATE CHANGE
The 21st Conference of Parties
(COP 21) held in Paris from
30 November to 11 December
2015 - also known as the 2015
Paris Climate Conference – organized by the
United Nations Conference on Climate Change
(UNFCC) concluded on a high note. Some
observers were quick to use words like ‘unprecedented’
and ‘historic’ in hailing the conclusion
of the negotiations which saw nations agreeing
to achieve the goal of preventing the temperature
of planet earth from rising by less than two
degree Celcius. This target is at the core of the
Paris Agreement agreed upon by 196 countries
at COP21in an attempt to reverse the ill effects of
global warming and climate change.
Sceptics may scoff at the commitment made
at COP 21 by dismissing it as being yet another
talk shop as industries and the masses continue to
release harmful gasses and spew carbon into the
atmosphere unabated. Cynics were quick to point
out that while COP 21 was in progress, Beijing
and New Delhi, the capitols of the world’s top two
most populous nation which account for a fifth of
the world population - were choked in smog and
the United States has yet to ratify Kyoto Protocol.
These three countries were among the world’s top
four largest emitters of CO2 in 2013, according to
a ranking by European Commission.
However, the message from COP 21 was loud
and clear: the status quo of global warming cannot
be maintained if the world is serious about reversing
the impacts of climate change and global
warming. Evidences are aplenty that Mother
Nature is under severe distress from rising temperature
caused by CO2 emissions arising from
human activities. If the spate of natural disasters
and rising ocean levels generated by climate
change are not enough to convince the sceptics,
2015 was earmarked as the hottest year on record,
exceeding the temperature in 2014. Governments,
industries and individuals can no longer sit still
and not make changes to their old ways that have
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Greenplus TM MARCH 2016