Two Degrees
January 26, 2010
“Flooding across Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh was caused by unpredictable rainfall up to 600 percent higher than normal, in a river basin that is the driest in the country.” While countries are preparing to meet this December in Copenhagen to discuss the future of the Kyoto Protocol and other strategies to reduce carbon emissions, 11700 miles away we are counting the deaths and infrastructural damages caused by floods.
As occasional references in newspaper articles and whispered speculations have hinted, this disaster and others around the world in Philippines, Indonesia etc. are a result of climate change. Factories in developed and developing countries belch out smoke and so do vehicles racing on highways and add what are called greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Since hundreds of years these gases have been accumulating to form a layer that creates a greenhouse like situation. Thus there has been a gradual increase in the global temperature because of the heat that reaches the earth’s surface and is trapped by the layer formed by these greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide etc. emission etc. Changes to India’s annual monsoon because of the climate change are expected to result in severe droughts and intense flooding in parts of India. High temperatures can also have an adverse effect on productivity as it slows down development and reduces longevity of the crop and cause major disruptions in the global food system. The Science Daily says that in the coming decades, one-fifth of the world’s population could starve and millions of others become climate refugees, forced by heat and drought to abandon their lands and hunt for food elsewhere.
Yes, the surface air temperature is increasing at a rate of 0.40c per century, a non-worrying decimal number to the masses who don’t think twice before going out on the streets to protest against an offensive movie dialogue. At the present rate, in another forty years we would’ve died in droughts or floods caused by climate change. The most worrying part of the prediction is the estimated increase in winter and summer temperatures by 3.2 degree and 2.2 degrees Celsius, respectively, by 2050. Once the global temperatures increase another two degrees, the damage will be irrevocable and we will have to devise ways to adapt to the changes caused by climate change. There will be no turning back. If you’re telling yourself you switch off your engines and fix leaky taps, wake up. The only purpose that will serve is perhaps save you on the electricity bill. We will not be able to prevent the consequences of climate change even if all of us switched off the extra light bulbs. Though less than 1% of scientists are in two minds about the man-made origins of climate change, more than 60% of the rest of the world’s population is still doubtful.
The only thing the people can do is pressurise and influence their leaders to take favourable decisions and pass legislations for drastic change. India being a developing country has a 103% increase in greenhouse gas emissions behind China. As the World waits for USA own up responsibility to the damage they caused in the past and sign the Kyoto Protocol, the global temperature graph is steadily rising. The protocol left several issues open to be decided later by the Conference of Parties (COP) which was unable to reach an agreement in their later meeting in Hague, 2000. While the EU favoured a tougher agreement the US, Canada, Japan and Australia wanted the agreement to be less demanding and more flexible.
The parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are going to meet in December in Copenhagen to discuss a successor to the Kyoto Protocol whose target year to reduce emissions ends in 2012 with no significant results. Organisations around the world like Greenpeace protested outside the White House last month and will probably be there in Copenhagen too. We need to raise our voice against slack governments to pull up their socks before it is too late. The Indian govt promote fuel wood plantations, bio-gas plants, bio-diesel and other largely untapped clean sources of energy. It is the duty of the citizens to remind their leaders to take appropriate action. The earth needs us.
Two degrees is all we have.
