marklynas.orgMontreal: good politics, bad science 12 December 05
The press seems nearly unanimous in welcoming the Montreal agreement as a major step forward in tackling climate change. The environmental groups agree. Politicians were singing from the same hymn sheet. Clearly the deal – which sets up negotiations for Annex 1 Kyoto parties to agree new post 2012 commitments – has a lot to commend it. The approach of mandatory targets is alive and kicking despite recent wobbles from Tony Blair and others. But is Montreal good science? Everything I’ve seen recently suggests that climate change impacts are happening faster than anyone expected, from the Gulf Stream slowing down to the melting of Arctic ice. There’s a reasonable consensus amongst the scientific community that limiting global warming to two degrees above pre-industrial levels will require emissions to peak and begin to decline within the next decade. Montreal shows clearly that this is not going to happen. Yes, China and India are now prepared to talk, but will only come to the table with prior agreement that no mandatory targets will be set for them. The United States seems destined to remain in the wilderness for as long at George Bush is in the White House. In other words, emissions from the two thirds of the world which aren’t parties to Kyoto’s Annex 1 will continue to skyrocket. (And don’t forget that emissions are rising also in most countries which do have targets.) Montreal should give us hope that forward-looking developed countries are still prepared to work towards cutting their emissions. But as far as the urgent need to tackle climate change is concerned, Montreal is barely a first step, which will make no measurable difference to either the rate or magnitude of global warming. Despite all the back-slapping, there are no grounds for complacency. The battle goes on.
Comments
Lynn Vincentnathan
December 12th, 2005 at 04:15 PM
I’ve received an appeal from Dr. Glen Barry, who gave up his professorship to run www.ClimateArk.org and other eco-websites. He needs a bit of money to support himself & his family. So, if you can, go to ClimateArk & make a donation.
Re the Summit, maybe India & China will soon get more involved in the GW issue, since it’s for their own benefit & their media ARE covering GW & their citizens do know about it(see below), unlike American media. No one here even knew about the Montreal Summit to decide whether the earth lives or dies – zero media coverage (except a short blurb on the Newshour – and no one I know watches that program). There’ll come a time in America when things get really nasty from GW (as if Katrina were not enough), when people are going to say, “What happened? Why wasn’t I told about this? What’s wrong with our government? We voted for the slobs because we thought they were pro-life? Why would they want to kill the earth and every living creature, including US?!!
Talked to my sister-in-law in India yesterday. They’re blaming the tremendous floods in Tamil Nadu on global warming – the freakish extremely heavy rainfalls this year & glacier melt. I haven’t read up on the Indian news, but my guess is that this will have caused much more damage than last year’s tsunami, though perhaps not as many immediate deaths. She told me entire roads would have to be rebuilt, and entire villages were wiped out, and unlike other years the flooding was extremely widespread, and throughout in many districts, and the water levels reached well beyond all time highs.
Almuth Ernsting
December 13th, 2005 at 04:13 PM
I totally agree with Mark that there is no room for complacency. Nothing has been agreed as yet which will stop even the worst of climate change.
Still, I think that this is an enormous success of people around the world who have begun to organise and to build a global movement to stop escalating fossil fuel emissions. Even a still quite small popular movement (a fraction of Make Poverty History), was enough to stop a very strong drive to bury the agreement (which would have killed any hope of negotiating a better one any time soon). If a few tens of thousands of people can achieve this, then this is a great incentive to try and mobilise much larger numbers – it suggests that, if enough is done, and enough people start organising in the next three years, massive emissions cuts will at least be on the agenda in 2008! And it also gives everybody time to decide what to campaign for – I would suggest massive emission cuts (the 4th IPCC Report should tell us how massive) as well as protection and restoration of key ecosystems to prevent runaway greenhouse warming from forest destruction, peat fires and peat drainage, which would destroy any hope of saving the planet with emission cuts alone.
Almuth Ernsting
Almuth Ernsting
December 19th, 2005 at 09:43 AM
Well, in parts. I have now received several congratulatory email dates from UK environmental NGOs which say, one of which goes as far as saying “we have achieved all that we asked for”. Although some enthusiasm about the mounting global pressure on politicians seems good, this goes too far for my liking.
There was a time, years ago, when successful news about Kyoto made me switch off about the whole subject – I only sat down last year and took the time to find out more about climate change, by which time one only had to go for a local walk to see that something major was happening. Yes, those positive news do stop people from getting involved, as I can say from personal experience.
There is a good and sobering editorial in this week’s New Scientist. It says that “with envirnmentalists playing politics, climate scientists now stand alone”. They compare the mood amongst some environmentalists and politicians in Montreal with that of the AGU conference held this month, where catastrophic climate change was mapped out and some scientists experessed their personal fears for their and their families’ lives.
Lynn suggested once that environmentalists tend to take the precautionary principle more seriously, whilst scientists tend to have to be 99% certain or so before they make a pronouncement. I hope that we can retrieve that balance, which seems to be a bit out of order just now!
Worth buying the New Scientist for that editorial this week!
Almuth