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Tuesday, 07 November 2006 17:08 |
 | | Mark West |
The costs of dealing with global warming right now are going to be extraordinarily high. And itës a project that will call for coordinated action, from the highest levels of government down to the most basic decisions of every human on planet Earth.
But if we donët deal with it, according to a report by Sir Nicholas Stern, and approved by Tony Blair, the costs will be much much higher. Stern, an economist, estimates that the effect might be a reduction of the world gross domestic product of 20 percent ÇƒÓ an astonishing sum of money, the likes of which have not been seen in modern times.
The
report suggested that, if steps are not taken immediately, as many as
200 million people could be forced from their homes by dramatic weather
ships, including droughts, floods and concomitant famine. The
disastrous results of such a massive refugee problem are difficult to
imagine, let alone to plan for. The report also suggests that species
extinction on a massive scale is likely, if steps to curb global
warming are not taken immediately.
The Stern report
comes on the heels of a NASA report last September which found that the
world was the warmest it had been in the last 12,000 years, this as a
result of unprecedented warming trend during the last three decades.
The climatologists observed that plant and animal species were
struggling in order to migrate to cooler regions before they became
extinct; that Greenland was losing about 100 trillion tons of ice a
year and that that loss of ice was accelerating. And the NASA report
followed a U.N. report showing an amazingly rapid increase in
greenhouse gas emissions from developed countries, with a 2.4 percent
total increase in emissions between 2000 and 2004 alone. Even more
astonishing was the observation of the U.N. that U.S. emissions of
greenhouse gases increased 15.4 percent between 1990 and 2004.
"Our actions
over the coming decades could create risks of major disruption to
economic and social activity, later in this century and in the next, on
a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the
economic depression of the first half of the 20th century," Stern said
in the report. And it should come as no surprise; with predicted
increases of temperature of 3.6 to 5.4 degrees within the next 50 years
or so, the effect on agriculture, water levels, and weather systems
would be unpredictable.
Of course, there
are those groups who have swung into action, denying the NASA reportës
validity, denying the reports of the vast majority of scientists,
denying, denying.
A personal
favorite is the "Cooler Heads Coalition," which seeks "to dispel the
myths of global warming by exposing flawed economic, scientific and
risk analysis." Besides headlines like "Gorey Truths: 25 Inconvenient
Truths for Al Gore" and "Siberians Shiver in Record Cold," the Website
contains gloating articles with titles like "Kyoto Protocol Declared
Dead at U.N. Climate Conference." Some of the sponsors of the "Cooler
Heads Coalition" include American Conservative Union, American Highway
Users Alliance, Defenders of Property Rights, English First, the
Heritage Foundation and think-tanks like the George C. Marshall
Institute.
I imagine that,
if youëve read this far, you actually think that global warming is a
real phenomenon. But letës assume, for a second, that it isnët. Or,
more precisely, letës assume that the observations are correct and that
there is warming throughout the globe, but that its cause is something
other than human activity. Perhaps itës increased solar emissions,
perhaps something else.
But we humans,
taking the route of safety, go ahead and reduce our reliance upon
fossil fuels and our emissions of greenhouse gases. We spend the one
percent of worldwide gross domestic product necessary. What, then, are
the outcomes?
Global warming
doesnët change; as weëve posited in our little thought experiment, itës
caused by something else. What does change is our dependence upon
fossil fuels from Saudi Arabia and Iran and Venezuela. Our air changes;
it gets cleaner and more breathable. Our technologies change, pushed
into a sort of green overdrive by the demands made by a movement away
from greenhouse gas producing technologies. We and our world are
healthier, our political system is less distorted by big oil and our
resultant dependency on imported petroleum.
The world is a
better place ÇƒÏ and if the scientists are right, we may very well have
avoided disaster. If the majority of scientists are wrong about global
warming, weëve merely made the world a better place in which to live.
It sounds like a no-brainer.
Whether thereës
global warming as a result of human activity or not, acting as if there
is would be a good thing, for the United States and for the world.
ï
Mark West is a professor of mass communications at UNC Asheville.
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