Contemplating mitigation measures

All things that make up the environment are interrelated. The way in which people, animals and plants are related to each other and to their surrounding is known as ecology. The ecosystem is a complex web that links animals, plants and every other life form in the biosphere. By altering any one part of the web you can affect all other parts. For example, the destruction of forests may have serious ecological consequences for humans and animals.
It is our responsibility to prevent the environment from being spoilt. To make life healthy and comfortable we should keep the environment clean and danger free.
But often people spoil the environment by doing unwise things and as a result, endanger their own lives. In recent years, many alarming reports provide strong evidence that world temperatures are increasing day by day. This increase in global warming is caused by increased amounts of carbon dioxide around the earth.
This is exemplified by the destruction and burning down of tropical rain forests, by traffic that clogs up city streets, by the rapid growth of industry, the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in packaging and manufacturing, the use of detergents and so on. The oceans are also said to be affected both human waste and because of pollution caused by industrial waste products, oil seeping from damaged supertankers and from other maritime disasters. However, the main culprit for global warming is carbon dioxide gas, produced by the burning of fossil fuels and forests and pollutants such as methane and chlorofluorocarbons.
Climatologists predict that by midway through the next century temperatures may have risen by as much as 40C. This could catastrophically reduce mankind's ability to grow food, destroy or severely damage wildlife and wilderness, raise sea levels and thereby flood coastal areas and farmland, the lower southern part of Bangladesh included.
If the world is going to prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system, we must agree to limit emissions so as to respect ecological limits. In order to avoid the most dangerous impacts of climate change, the latest science tells us that carbon emissions in industrialized countries will need to drop by at least 90 percent by 2050.
The United Nations aims to get countries to reduce their emissions of climate changing gases via the Kyoto Protocol. But the target for CO2 reduction is currently set at only 5.2 per cent below 1990 levels by 2012 for the industrialised countries. Countries have still not achieved consensus on a way to move forward past 2012.
From another perspective, while the use of fuel increases to keep up with modern demands, the world is becoming more vulnerable to environmental hazards and disasters. At present, oil provides above 40 to 43 percent of all energy used by the world. Oil and coal each account for 40 percent of global warming emissions from fossil fuels worldwide. In the United States, energy use accounts for 82 percent of our global warming emissions, with oil counting for 42 percent of those emissions. Countries in the tropics and the small island states are likely bear the brunt of the consequences.
Developing country economies are harmed when they are dependent on volatile oil imports. And when the oil is finally burned, and the carbon contained in it released into the atmosphere, it contributes heavily to decreased agricultural production, increased droughts, human health impacts, environmentally related refugees and other already observed and predicted impacts of climate change.
One of the most effective solutions to these environmental hazards is to raise the price of fuel. The use of petroleum releases toxic chemicals into our atmosphere. These chemicals escape into the air during refilling, from the gasoline tank and carburetor during normal operation, and from engine exhaust. Transportation sources account for about 30-50% of all harmful emissions into the atmosphere.
Raising the price of fuel would mean that people would use less petroleum. They would find other alternative means of transport to save money, which would mean using less high priced fuel for everyday purposes. For example, cycling is a healthy activity and it saves the earth too. Also for a long journey, people could try to find friends together for car-pooling. Car-pooling saves a lot of fuel and would save a lot of money too.
Many environmental hazards like “smog” are increasing around the would due to excessive use of petroleum in our daily lives. Raising the price of the fuel may make all the difference to the environment. It would force people to use petrol in more responsible way and use it less, and thereby provide one of the most effective solutions to the problem of ever-increasing environmental hazards.
We feel the government and its specialised agencies, non-governmental organisations, industries, educational institutions and individuals should act immediately to counter the on-going degradation of the atmosphere.
Target for energy-efficiency and energy supply improvement should be fixed. The desired reduction in carbon dioxide emissions will also require switching to fuels that emit less carbon dioxide; reviewing strategies for the implementation of renewable energy, especially advanced biomass conversion technologies; and reviewing nuclear power. If safety, radioactive waste and unclear weapons proliferation problems can be solved, unclear power could play a role in lowering emissions of carbon dioxide.
There must be vigorous application of existing technologies to reduce emissions of acidifying substances, other substances that are precursors of troposphere ozone, and greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide.
Products should be labeled to allow consumers judge the extent and nature of atmospheric contamination arising from the manufacture and use of the product.
Resources for research and monitoring efforts within the world climate programme, the international ecosphere-biosphere programme, and the human response to global change programme should be increased. It is particularly important to understand how climate changes on a regional scale and gets related to an overall global change of climate, and how the oceans affect global heat transport and the flux of greenhouse gases.
Funding for research, development and the transfer of information on renewable energy should be significantly increased, and technology transfer should be extended with particular emphasis on the needs of developing countries.
Funding for extensive technology transfer and technical cooperation projects in coastal zone protection and management should be expanded.
Deforestation should be reduced and afforestation increased through establishment of a trust fund to provide adequate incentives to developing nations to manage their tropical forest resources at a sustainable level.
Technical cooperation projects to allow developing nations to participate in international mitigation efforts should be developed and supported.
Funding may be increased to non-governmental organisations for establishment of environmental education programmes and public awareness campaigns that would aim at changing public values and behaviour with respect to the environment.

by Md. Atikur Rahman, The Daily Star-Saturday, May 26, 2012

The New York Times Exclusive

Marching off the cliff

Noam Chomsky

A task of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, now under way in Durban, South Africa, is to extend earlier policy decisions that were limited in scope and only partially implemented.
These decisions trace back to the UN Convention of 1992 and the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, which the US refused to join. The Kyoto Protocol's first commitment period ends in 2012. A fairly general pre-conference mood was captured by a New York Times headline: "Urgent Issues but Low Expectations."
As the delegates meet in Durban, a report on newly updated digests of polls by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Program on International Policy Attitudes reveals that "publics around the world and in the United States say their government should give global warming a higher priority and strongly support multilateral action to address it."
Most US citizens agree, though PIPA clarifies that the percentage "has been declining over the last few years, so that American concern is significantly lower than the global average -- 70% as compared to 84%."
"Americans do not perceive that there is a scientific consensus on the need for urgent action on climate change (euro). A large majority think that they will be personally affected by climate change eventually, but only a minority thinks that they are being affected now, contrary to views in most other countries. Americans tend to underestimate the level of concern among other Americans."
These attitudes aren't accidental. In 2009 the energy industries, backed by business lobbies, launched major campaigns that cast doubt on the near-unanimous consensus of scientists on the severity of the threat of human-induced global warming.
The consensus is only "near-unanimous" because it doesn't include the many experts who feel that climate-change warnings don't go far enough, and the marginal group that deny the threat's validity altogether.
The standard "he says/she says" coverage of the issue keeps to what is called "balance": the overwhelming majority of scientists on one side, the denialists on the other. The scientists who issue the more dire warnings are largely ignored.
One effect is that scarcely one-third of the US population believes that there is a scientific consensus on the threat of global warming -- far less than the global average, and radically inconsistent with the facts.
It's no secret that the US government is lagging on climate issues. "Publics around the world in recent years have largely disapproved of how the United States is handling the problem of climate change," according to PIPA. "In general, the United States has been most widely seen as the country having the most negative effect on the world's environment, followed by China. Germany has received the best ratings."
To gain perspective on what's happening in the world, it's sometimes useful to adopt the stance of intelligent extraterrestrial observers viewing the strange doings on Earth. They would be watching in wonder as the richest and most powerful country in world history now leads the lemmings cheerfully off the cliff.
Last month, the International Energy Agency, which was formed on the initiative of US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1974, issued its latest report on rapidly increasing carbon emissions from fossil fuel use.
The IEA estimated that if the world continues on its present course, the "carbon budget" will be exhausted by 2017. The budget is the quantity of emissions that can keep global warming at the 2 degrees Celsius level considered the limit of safety.
IEA chief economist Fatih Birol said: "The door is closing (euro) if we don't change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum (for safety). The door will be closed forever."
Also last month, the U.S. Department of Energy reported the emissions figures for 2010. Emissions "jumped by the biggest amount on record," The Associated Press reported, meaning that "levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst-case scenario" anticipated by the International Panel on Climate Change in 2007.
John Reilly, co-director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's program on climate change, told the AP that scientists have generally found the IPCC predictions to be too conservative unlike the fringe of denialists who gain public attention. Reilly reported that the IPCC's worst-case scenario was about in the middle of the MIT scientists' estimates of likely outcomes.
As these ominous reports were released, the Financial Times devoted a full page to the optimistic expectations that the US might become energy-independent for a century with new technology for extracting North American fossil fuels.
Though projections are uncertain, the Financial Times reports, the US might "leapfrog Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the world's largest producer of liquid hydrocarbons, counting both crude oil and lighter natural gas liquids."
In this happy event, the U.S. could expect to retain its global hegemony. Beyond some remarks about local ecological impact, the Financial Times said nothing about what kind of a world would emerge from these exciting prospects. Energy is to burn; the global environment be damned.
Just about every government is taking at least halting steps to do something about the likely impending catastrophe. The US is leading the way -- backward. The Republican-dominated U.S. House of Representatives is now dismantling environmental measures introduced by Richard Nixon, in many respects the last liberal president.
This reactionary behaviour is one of many indications of the crisis of US democracy in the past generation. The gap between public opinion and public policy has grown to a chasm on central issues of current policy debate such as the deficit and jobs. However, thanks to the propaganda offensive, the gap is less than what it should be on the most serious issue on the international agenda today -- arguably in history.
The hypothetical extraterrestrial observers can be pardoned if they conclude that we seem to be infected by some kind of lethal insanity.
The writer is a Professor of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.
© New York Times. Distributed by the New York Times Syndicate.