PROTECT OUR CLIMATE August 1999

Warming is destabilizing the climate that has supported human civilization for thousands of years. The deep oceans are warming, fracturing Antarctic ice shelves and disrupting rainfall patterns. Glaciers are melting. Oceans are rising. Tropical diseases are spreading. It’s time to send a message to our leaders that stronger action is needed now to prevent violent changes to our planet’s weather.

Each year humans pump 6 billion tons of heat-trapping carbon gas into our thin band of atmosphere whose boundary is only 20 kilometers (12 miles) overhead. The buildup of “greenhouse gases”—especially carbon dioxide (CO2) from the burning of oil and coal and the destruction of forests—is causing an increase in extreme weather.

1998 saw an extraordinary ice storm which immobilized parts of Canada for weeks; massive fires in Brazil, Mexico and the U.S.; killer heat waves in the Middle East and India; Mexico’s worst drought in 70 years; flooding in China which left 14 million homeless; the worst flooding in the history of Bangladesh; and over 9,000 hurricane deaths in Central America.

In 1997 in Kyoto, Japan, the richer countries agreed that by 2012 they would cut their emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases by 5.5 % below 1990 levels. Even if they succeed, by 2012 overall global emissions will still be 30% higher than they were in 1990—as the less affluent, developing nations burn more fossil fuel.

The Kyoto goals are pitifully inadequate compared to the requirements of nature. Just to maintain current carbon levels in the atmosphere, which are already changing our climate, requires cuts in emissions of 50%–70%! For the climate to re-stabilize itself requires deeper cuts.

The solution must include a global transition to renewable energy technologies like solar and wind power. This transition would create millions of jobs worldwide and give us cleaner air. All that is lacking is the political will.

To begin the transition, governments should:

   1. Redirect government support that is currently given for fossil fuels—which now amounts to about US$300 billion globally—to renewable energy (and to retraining oil and coal workers).

   2. Create a global fund to finance renewable energy in developing nations and the protection of forests. One possible funding source—a levy of a quarter of a cent per US dollar on international currency transactions—would generate over $200 billion a year.

   3. Negotiate an agreement to rapidly reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to a safe level.

What You Can Do

Contact one or more of your representatives in your parliament/congress. Ask them to urge your government to:
* Redirect fossil fuel subsidies to renewable energy.

    * Raise funds from a levy on international currency transfers for a democratically controlled global fund for renewable energy in developing nations and the protection of forests.

    * Demand an ultimate global cap on greenhouse gas emissions at 30% of current levels—with emission rights allocated fairly among all countries.

Please act now. If enough of us speak out together, we can make a difference for the future of our planet.

BACKGROUND

Global Warming is Destabilizing Our World
What is happening to our climate?

Humanity is altering the chemistry of the atmosphere by its release of “greenhouse gases”—primarily carbon dioxide, CO2, from the burning of fossil fuels—which trap the sun’s heat and prevent it from radiating back into space. For the last 10,000 years we have had the same amount of CO2 in the atmosphere (about 280 parts per million) until about 100 years ago when we began to burn more coal and oil. Unless urgent action is taken now, that 280 (which has already increased to 360 ppm) is expected to double in the next century—correlating with an increase in the global temperature of 1° to 3.5° C (3° to 7° F). By contrast, the last Ice Age was only 2° to 5°C (5° to 9° F) colder than our current climate.

Global warming is already expressing itself in a more unstable climate marked by a growing number of severe weather events. Scientists have documented an increase in unseasonable weather, temperature extremes, forest fires, altered rainfall and drought patterns, and severe storms and downpours.

The reason for the latter is simple: as the atmosphere warms, it accelerates the evaporation of surface waters. It also expands the air to hold more water. So when a normal storm occurs, it results in more intense rainfall.

One measurement of the increasingly unstable climate lies in the skyrocketing losses to the world’s property insurers. In the 1980s, damage claims from extreme weather events averaged $2 billion a year; in the 1990s, they are averaging $12 billion a year. The losses to severe weather in 1998 alone exceeded all such losses for the entire decade of the 1980s. The insurance giant, Munich Re, recently reported: “The general trend towards ever-increasing numbers of catastrophes with ever-increasing costs is continuing.” The head of the Re-insurance Association of America has said that unless something is done to stabilize the climate, it could bankrupt the industry. Representatives of the world’s tourism industry are equally worried about the impacts of climate change.
What are some of the future consequences?

Climate change could bring about a global catastrophe as big as any in history.

Rising sea levels could mean the total disappearance of some island nations and large scale flooding of many coastal regions where the majority of the world’s population now live.

Altered drought and rainfall patterns could disrupt food supplies, leading to famine and homelessness in many areas. Changes in the climate, which are already triggering migrations of species and ecosystems, could also lead to massive extinctions as rising temperatures play havoc with established habitats.
What is the effect of global warming on human health?

Warming accelerates the breeding rates of insects. It is also propelling disease-carrying insects to altitudes and latitudes which were only a few years ago too cold to support their survival for very long. As a result, mosquitoes, for instance, are spreading malaria, yellow fever and dengue fever to populations which have never before been exposed. At current rates of warming, scientists project mosquito-borne diseases to double in the tropical regions in the next century and to increase a hundred-fold in the temperate regions. Globally, malaria has quadrupled in the last five years. The cholera epidemic of the early 1990s, which affected 500,000 in Peru alone, was due in part to warming. Changes in the climate have promoted the emergence of a frequently lethal pulmonary virus in Chile and the Southwestern U.S., the spread of a strain of encephalitis and an increase in tick-borne Lyme disease.
Will climate change have political consequences?

In the longer run, climate change could damage the prospects for democracy around the world. It is not hard to foresee governments resorting to permanent states of martial law in the face of food shortages, droughts, floods, incursions of environmental refugees and epidemics of disease. In the fall of 1997, for instance, following a four-month spell of drought and frost, 700,000 Papua New Guineans left their homes and wandered the countryside in search of food and water. Officials said they could not control the situation. Fortunately, other countries came to their aid, but the situation illustrates the kind of political instability related to climate change.

Climatic instability holds anti-democratic economic potentials as well. It will shrink markets and impair the international flow of industrial commodities. It could easily lead to food rationing with its associated black-market crime. It could lead to the militarization of disaster relief forces to maintain social order. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency is already assessing potentials for political destabilization from climate-related disruptions.

Experts predict a surge in the number of environmental refugees as people flee areas afflicted by flood, drought, epidemics of disease or food shortages. Today’s environmental refugees number about 25 million—more than all other types of refugees combined. That number is projected to double in the next decade. The likely casualty will be the democratic process, as governments resort to force to maintain social order.

Indicators of Climate Change

•    In late 1995, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, comprising more than 2,000 scientists from 100 countries, reported to the United Nations that global warming is underway and that it is being propelled by fossil fuel emissions. While much of the science has depended on climate computer models and weather data analysis, there is a body of documented physical changes taking place on the planet which are very troubling:

•    Recently, scientists from Australia, Canada, Russia and the U.S. found that ocean surface waters have warmed from 2° to 3°C (5° to 7°F) in most of the world, independent of El Niño events. That has triggered a 70% decline in the population of zooplankton in the eastern Pacific in the last 20 years, and is threatening the survival of coral reefs and many species of fish and sea birds.

•    In some areas, ocean warming caused a turnover in the population of marine life, driving cold-water fish northward as warm-water fish and sea animals moved in to populate the area. As ocean warming pushed fish populations northward, atmospheric warming has pushed whole populations of butterflies in the same direction—from the mountains of Mexico, for example, to the hills of Vancouver, Canada.

•    Deep ocean warming is causing the break up of Antarctic ice shelves—another piece of the Larsen Ice Shelf larger than Lebanon broke off in March, 1998. It is also apparently fueling more frequent and severe El Niños - periodic changes in ocean circulation patterns in the Eastern Pacific which have severe consequences for climate around the world. The El Niño which ended in 1995, lasted 5 years and 8 months, making it a 1-in-2000-year event. The El Niño of 1997-98 was the most severe on record.

•    High above the oceans, most of the earth’s glaciers are retreating at accelerating rates. The biggest glacier in the Peruvian Andes was retreating by 4.25 meters (14 feet) a year 20 years ago; today it is shrinking by 30 meters (99 feet) a year. The melting is contributing to sea level rise and is threatening water supplies for many mountain-based communities around the world.

•    The northern tundra, which for thousands of years has absorbed methane and CO2, is now thawing and releasing those gases back into the atmosphere; the permafrost in Siberia and North America is turning to something like pea soup in many areas.

•    We have altered the timing of the seasons. Because of the buildup of atmospheric CO2, spring is arriving a week earlier in the northern hemisphere than it did 20 years ago. The change in seasonal timing threatens crops, animal migrations and food supplies.