By Arnoldo Ventura
Special Advisor to the Prime Minister of Jamaica
Arnoldo Ventura, Phd.
Effects of Global Warming
There is no doubt that the changes brought on by Globa Warming will transform the physical geography of our planet, with powerful implications for human existence and quality of life.
There is little doubt that basic needs, such as, water, food, health, land use and the environment will be seriously affected. Warming will force its impact through water, melting glaciers, which are the water reservoirs for northern countries, will undermine the age-old water flows and supplies. Higher temperatures mean greater evaporation of water and declining crop yields, with ultimately malnutrition. Heating will also cause more vector borne diseases and rising sea levels covering coastal cities and low-lying agricultural lands. Other consequences include the receding of summer stream flows, extinction of species and increase in the numbers of disease bearing vectors. Warming of 2-3oC will irrevocably damage rainforests, which are considered the lungs of the world, such as those in the Amazon.
Higher temperatures will also mean heavier floods, more intense droughts and storms. Just take the case of hurricanes. In the 1960’s windstorms caused economic losses of around US$4 billion dollars. In the 1990’s losses topped US$133 billion and during 2000-2005 hurricanes left a staggering bill of US$273 billion. With this in mind, countries like Jamaica should discontinue building hotels close to the low-lying coastlines.
Additionally, the oceans will become more acidic. As a result of greater carbon dioxide concentration, corals and other marine eco-systems will be seriously disrupted, with the oceans becoming less productive and unsupportive of many existing life forms. Age-old deep ocean currents that temper climates in places like Atlantic Europe are predicted to change course or collapse.
Such contemplated temperature rises will change Jamaica into a dry and inhospitable place, while Polar Regions may become subtropical. The implications for local tourism and agriculture are clearly catastrophic.
So Jamaica will be a victim of, as well as a contributor to global warming. Cities like Kingston and Montego Bay, which are designed more for cars than people, with long traffic jams across the island at the peak morning and afternoon hours, become purveyors of pollutants and greenhouse gases. Additionally, and as open spaces become available, they are covered over and made into parking lots, instead of parks for children and adult relaxation, with the result that rain water no longer percolates into the soil but rushes as floods to the sea, taking all in its wake.
In Jamaica and other Caribbean islands, the El Nino phenomenon or the heating of the sub-tropical Pacific waters off the coast of South America, will have great significance for extremes of floods and droughts. Mudslides will become more frequent and topsoil lost, reducing the productivity of the land.
Globally, already in 2002, the record high temperatures and associated droughts have reduced grain harvests in India, the United States and Canada, dropping the world harvests some 90 million tons, or 5% below present consumption demands. Intense heat waves have also occurred in the USA, where some 200 residents of Chicago died. In 2003, heat waves claimed 49,000 lives in Europe. Forest fires have become more frequent and intense on all the inhabited continents. In Japan, in 2004, there were 10 typhoons, costing over US$70 billion.
The airline industry is one of the greatest carbon dioxide polluters because of its energy intensive nature and this presents a dilemma for travel and freight, especially fresh food transportation.
These are but a few of the possible effects of global warming, which may well become reciprocative and reinforcing thereby accelerating the greenhouse and associated effects.
Responsible Parties
Most of the man-made carbon dioxide pollution has been due to the highly industrialized States, which have witnessed high economic growth rates based on subsidized fossil fuel energy. Their gas guzzling motor vehicles, smoke stock factories and philosophy of endless growth and uncontrolled greed, have created economies that appear successful on the surface, but accumulate an environmental debt that is unsustainable.
As a matter of fact, these countries have not only polluted but have done so with the introduction of large subsidies. Their fossil fuel industries have been subsidized to the tune of over US$210 billion. Many of the oil and gas companies have fought assiduously to subvert the truth of man-made climate change and the fallacy of promoting them with taxpayers’ money. These subsidies in the USA are largely hidden as depletion allowances for oil pumping and routine military expenditures to protect access to Middle East oil. On top of this, there are large subsidies in the US for automobile use to some US$275 billion a year. Essentially, the hapless poor are forced to subsidize the rich, and at the same time the anticipated climatic changes will be most severe on them.
What is sad about this is that rapidly developing poor countries, like China and India, which have the largest share of the world’s population, are using the first world economies as models to follow. The consequence is that the rate of global warming is set to drastically increase, with all of its deadly consequences. It has been estimated that for China alone to reach the living standards, of say, the USA, it would take the resources of at least three earths to do so. Not only will their economies become major polluters but they will also deplete the world’s resources at an astonishing rate. Clearly, this must be corrected.
The argument of these countries is that just when they are ready to develop, the environmental card is being played and they should not be prevented from enjoying their turn at prosperity. In a sense, the development cost of the rich countries is being shifted to the poor ones. Smaller environmentally delicate countries like Jamaica are being asked to pay the environmental debt created by the profligate rich, without the knowledge and resources to accept such challenges. Clearly, a new development paradigm must be crafted for human life to be maintained on this planet.
Essentially, many of the rich countries’ business leaders have been in denial since the advent of Rachael Carlson’s ”The Silent Spring” written over 50 years, and which first opened the eyes of many to the emerging global environmental problem occasioned by an unsustainable economic model, started with the Industrial Revolution in England some 300 years ago.
Many multilateral institutions and scientific bodies, however, were not deterred, and kept pressing the case for the acknowledgement of scientific evidence and the impeccable logic of global warming and the attendant misuse of modern technology and capitalism. The words of Norwegian Oystein Dahle, captured this sentiment nicely. He said, “Socialism collapsed because it did not allowed the market to tell the truth”. Capitalism may collapse because it does not allow the market to tell the ecological truth.
Consequently, ways to combat global warming on an international level have been devised. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), The Kyoto Protocol and a range of other informal international partnerships and dialogues, have been launched to try and mobilize against global warming. However, the United States, and a small number of allies, have steadfastly insisted that they will not cooperate unless these measures include the poor countries, many of which have just started their efforts to reduce poverty. Without providing them with new ways to develop, these countries will continue to grapple unfortunately with equity and social responsibilities. In this context, it must be remembered that poverty is a significant contributor to pollution and greenhouse gases, and all efforts should be made to reduce this bane of mankind.
Solutions
To reduce the rate of global warming and to stabilize it at acceptable levels, will require a cut-back in the combustion of fossil fuels, such as oil and coal, which cause the majority of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Fortunately, strategies to begin an attack on global warming exist. These include the development of new renewable energy technologies, such as wind, solar and bio-fuels; installation of nuclear power plants and use of electric or hybrid automobiles and fuel cells, along with the introduction of conservation, more energy efficient appliances, improving carbon sinks, deliberate use of sulphate aerosols to cool the earth, population control and capture and storage of carbon-dioxide.
The adoption of these will require more evidence-based thinking, and realistic attitudes of the leaders of industry and politics to research and application. Also, the way economies are structured and the popular indicators of success will have to be modified to take into account the fact that the earth is a finite body, and that its plunder is not limitless.
A recent UK report on the global warming debacle has provided a most succinct way to proceed. It stated, “Securing broad-based and sustained cooperation require an equitable distribution of effort across both the developed and developing countries. There is no simple formula that captures all dimensions of equity, but calculation based on income, historic responsibility and per capita emissions, all point to the rich countries taking responsibility for emissions reductions of 60-80%from 1990 levels by 2050”. And I will add, the long promised increased levels of technology transfer and collaborative R&D are now urgently indispensable.
Conclusion
The cost of these initiatives will clearly be high, for example, it is calculated that it will cost the developing countries alone some US$20-30 billion dollars per year. But clearly, it will be more costly to do nothing. The world is the richest it has ever been, so the sums that are needed to reduce and stabilize global warming are estimated to be less than 1% per year of the total GNP per year of the rich world.
To get things right, man must now shun the lure of his acquisitive and voracious materialistic drives, which clamor for bigger and brighter over cleaner and healthier. His reptilian brain must now be subordinated to his mammalian brain, for life as we know it to survive.
It must be remembered that the earth’s environment can exist without humans and that indeed the earth’s web of life now depends on man’s attitude and actions. Nothing less than a new way to manage our existence on a finite planet is necessary.
. Dr. Ventura is a KC Old Boy and special advisor to the Prime Minister of Jamaica. Part I can be found in the March 2007 issue of the newsletter by using the archive feature.
