Damage From
Global Warming
Becoming 'Irreversible'
By Jim Lobe
16 March, 2004 by
OneWorld.net
Ten
years after the ratification of a United Nations treaty on climate change,
greenhouse gas emissions that lead to global warming are still on the
rise, signaling a "collective failure" of the industrialized
world, according to the Washington-based World Resources Institute (WRI),
a leading environmental think-tank.
"We are quickly
moving to the point where the damage will be irreversible," warned
Dr. Jonathan Pershing, director of WRI's Climate, Energy and Pollution
Program. "In fact, the latest scientific reports indicate that
global warming is worsening. Unless we act now, the world will be locked
into temperatures that would cause irreversible harm."
WRI researchers
estimate that greenhouse gas emissions such as carbon dioxide rose 11
percent over the last decade, and will grow another 50 percent worldwide
by 2020. Under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the international agreement
that sets out specific targets to follow up on the treaty, 38 industrialized
countries were supposed to reduce their emissions by an average of seven
percent below 1990 levels by 2012.
The administration
of former President Bill Clinton signed the Kyoto Protocol, but President
Bush withdrew the U.S., which currently emits about 25 percent of the
world's greenhouse gases, from negotiations over Kyoto's implementation.
Russia, which indicated
initially that it intended to ratify the Protocol, remains undecided.
As a result the Protocol--which must be ratified by countries whose
greenhouse emissions totaled more than 55 percent of global emissions
in 1990 in order to take effect--remains in limbo.
WRI decided to make
a relatively rare public statement now, both because the tenth anniversary
of the UNFCCC's ratification will take place next weekend and because
of the growing pessimism surrounding the international community's ability
and will to deal with the problem.
The UN Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which called for voluntary reductions
in greenhouse emissions, was signed by, among others, then-President
George H.W. Bush, at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and
took formal effect March 21, 1994. Today, 188 countries are signatories.
The Kyoto Protocol
grew out of the UNFCCC when it became clear that plans for voluntary
reductions would not meet the initial targets, and as climate and atmospheric
scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have become
increasingly convinced that the rise in global temperatures of about
one degree Fahrenheit over the last century is due primarily to artificial
emissions, notably the combustion of fossil fuels, including coal, oil,
and gas.
Studies over the
past decade have shown that the warming trend continues. "The five
warmest years in recorded weather history have taken place over the
last six years," noted WRI's president, Jonathan Lash.
"The ten warmest
years in recorded weather history have taken place since 1987. Whether
it's the retreat of glaciers, the melting of the permafrost in Alaska,
or the increase in severe weather events, the world is experiencing
what the global warming models predict," he said.
Europe, the main
champion of the Kyoto Protocol, suffered its hottest year on record
last year. Some 15,000 people in France alone died due to heat stress
in combination with pollution, while European agriculture suffered an
estimated $12.5 billion in losses.
Britain's most influential
scientist, Sir David King, recently excoriated the Bush administration
for withdrawing from the Protocol and ignoring the threat posed by climate
change. "In my view, climate change is the most severe problem
we are facing today," he wrote in Science magazine, "more
serious even than the threat of terrorism."
Even the Pentagon
recently issued a warning that global warming, if it takes place abruptly,
could result in a catastrophic breakdown in international security.
Based on growing evidence that climate shifts in the past have taken
place with breathtaking speed, based on the freshening of sea water
due to accelerated melting of glaciers and the polar ice caps.
Given enough freshening,
the Gulf Stream that currently warms the North Atlantic would be shut
off, triggering an abrupt decline in temperatures that would bring about
a new "Ice Age" in Europe, eastern Canada, and the northeastern
United States and similar disastrous changes in world weather patterns
elsewhere--all in a period as short as two to three years.
Wars over access
to food, water, and energy would be likely to break out between states,
according to the report. "Disruption and conflict will be endemic
features of life," according to the report. "Once again, warfare
would define human life."
Even if climate
change is more gradual, recent studies have argued that as many as one
million plant and animal species could be rendered extinct due to the
effects of global warming by 2050. A recent report by the world's largest
reinsurance company, Swiss Re, predicted that in 10 years the economic
cost of disasters like floods, frosts, and famines caused by global
warming could reach $150 billion annually.
"Accelerated
development of a portfolio of technologies could stabilize greenhouse
gas concentrations, enhance global energy security, and eradicate energy
poverty," noted David Jhirad, WRI's vice president for research.
"We urgently need the political will and international cooperation
to make this happen."
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2004 OneWorld.net