The only chance: a sustainable society and a greener world
What if the temperature on the Earth will rise by 4°C by 2100? This is the increasingly debated scenario we could face in a very few generations time. 55 million years ago, after the so-called Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum event clathrates - large areas of frozen methane - were explosively released from the deep ocean emitting 5 gigatonnes of carbon (less than the current year anthropogenic CO2 emissions). The subsequent temperature increase was +5 to +6 °C causing huge environmental changes: some of these threats, like new clathrates releases, are now discussed to be at least not impossible in the future. Four degrees would render the planet unrecognisable but this is the Anthropocene (the famous Paul Crutzen’s definition) world we have to prepare to, according to Bob Watson, former chair of the IPCC. The sea level rise could be in the range of several meters: Bangladesh is likely to lose its “bread basket” because of droughts after large floods happening in the Indian subcontinent; huge glacial retreat could dry up many aquifers in Europe and most worryingly in the Himalayan region causing a drastic reduction of water supply to Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, Bhutan, India and Vietnam.
What can still be done on time to stop all this from happening, or at least minimize the impacts slowing down their causes? In last press conference after a UNFCCC meeting in Bonn, the Executive Secretary, Yvo de Boer, stressed the attention on urgency, adaptation funds and deforestation measures to be put into place in the Copenhagen forthcoming agreement. Global challenges such as hunger and overpopulation require developed and developing nations to cooperate with the firm intent to stop the destruction of tropical rainforests that absorb a huge amount of carbon from the atmosphere and to cut CO2 emissions to avoid dangerous “tipping points” and thresholds in the climate system to be exceeded. More food will be needed in the future (50% more by 2030), but there will be less water in many countries: the ones with enough land and rain to sustain migrating populations will be the high latitude regions such as Canada, Scandinavian countries and Patagonia. Agriculture will be crucial in both reducing its impacts on the atmosphere and in providing human populations with enough food to live: small-scale agro-forestry plans seem a good way to address these problems especially in the developing world where rural areas host so many people. De Boer said that poor countries should also contribute in shaping a different future via their Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) that need anyway large financial and technological support from richer nations and private companies.
But are human beings going to survive to the massive changes predicted? James Hansen, head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, thinks that in an atmosphere with 550 ppm of CO2 the planet would be ice free and sea level could be up to 80 meters higher (!); the 2007 IPCC scenarios could be “optimistic”, but different experts see the future brighter or darker, or better, hotter or just warmer. James Lovelock, the theorist of Gaia hypothesis, believes that humans will survive as a species, but the cull during this century is going to be huge, with a billion or less people left on our planet by 2100. On the contrary others suggest rethinking the world going beyond national borders in order to cooperate and share resources more intelligently, e.g.: not cultivating thirsty crops like rice in dry regions. But for some it could be too late, like for islands such as Kiribati, in Micronesia, where a programme of gradual migration to Australia and New Zealand has been already started. "I would like to be optimistic that we'll survive, but I've got no good reason to be," says the Chemist Nobel Prize Crutzen. "In order to be safe, we would have to reduce our carbon emissions by 70 per cent by 2015. We are currently putting in 3 per cent more each year." According to Will Steffen, Australian National University, not only climate shifts are non linear: human reactions are as well so, if we change radically in the right direction and fast enough, we might be able to invert the bad current trends effectively. It seems though we still need time to get close to the catastrophe enough to be able to produce a severe collective repentance, to be honest. Sustainability at all levels, from citizens to multilateral global actions, and massive conservation and reforestation programmes are the obliged choices to be made soon.
Written by Luca Marazzi on behalf of Responding to Climate Change
Main sources: “How to survive the coming century” (by Gaia Vince) - http://www.newscientist.com and “Informal Ministerial Consultations held by the President of COP 14 during the high-level segment of the CSD New York, 14 May 2009” - http://unfccc.int.
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