politics and environment

The news that international leaders in Italy were not able to commit to strong, binding climate change agreements probably doesn't surprise anybody. "It is no small task for 17 leaders to bridge their differences on an issue like climate change," said president Obama. But tackling an issue of this urgency, complexity, and enormity may have an upside.
Right now, leaders of so-called 'developed' and 'developing' countries are at a standoff with good reason: developed countries have polluted more in the past, but developing countries are rapidly outpacing us. Countries like the US have much higher emissions per capita, while poorer nations argue they're simply trying to provide basic services for their people. "Developed countries like my own have a historic responsibility to take the lead," Obama said. But without the help of developing nations like China and India, our best efforts will not stop global warming.
Clearly, this impasse will not be resolved using the current paradigm of 'developed' and 'developing' nations. Leaders of the so-called 'First World' and 'Third World' are confronting the reality that we live on one world; that the atmosphere has no borders, and that the old ways of exploiting, outsourcing, offshoring etc. won't work in this crisis. When I hear these leaders argue, I wonder if climate change might not be the issue that ultimately resolves this artificial distinction between developed and developing nations. Could this crisis be a spur to creating whole-world institutions and global solutions? After all, it's happened before.
World War II was also a global crisis that required nations to overcome artificial boundaries and reshape social institutions. A desperate need for soldiers forced us to address racism, and integrate the military. A desperate need for labor forced us to address sexism, and let women work in factories. Both of these changes paved the way for civil rights and women's liberation. Back then we needed new technologies, and we needed to produce them rapidly and deploy them all over the world. Today, the same is true. But there are differences as well.
Fighting a war against other humans was a challenge everybody understood and agreed upon. Fighting a war to re-establish harmony with Mother Nature is an oxymoron; clearly, this is a very different type of struggle. And while alliances were developed in the course of fighting WWII, stronger international agreements and institutions were not developed until after the shooting stopped. This time, we need international agreements before the shooting starts. If climate change disrupts crop production, hundreds of millions of starving refugees will come knocking at our doors, creating worldwide political chaos of tragic proportion.

Developing nations don't trust us, because of years of exploitation and entanglement - politically, economically, and socially. But the power-plants dismantled in Germany have been rebuilt in China and are now polluting the Yangtze river instead of the Rhine. Meanwhile, the wind turbines and solar panels that dirty power is creating are being sold to the West, because they're too expensive for the Chinese to buy themselves. Estimates are that up to 20% of CA's air pollution is blowing across the Pacific from China; and the ocean is rising on all continents regardless of political boundaries or economics. In essence, climate change is the reality that puts the lie to our illusions of separateness.
Just as we saw with the economic crisis, environmental crises are not strictly national problems - they affect us all. After the 1973 Oil Crisis, the US created the Library Group, which became the G-6, then G7, then G8. On the financial side, we had the G20, the G22 and now the G33. While it's not surprising that these leaders don't all agree, it's encouraging that they're meeting at all, because this irreversible trend toward getting everybody to the table is a necessary first step to true global agreement.
Creating global carbon markets; developing cheap, reliable solar energy; implementing best practices on energy efficiency; improving battery technology; promoting sustainable agriculture and effective water reuse strategies - none of these will be easy. But we've always been good at responding to a crisis. The true test of 'development' this time will be to see if we can get out in front of it.
History may look back on these fledgling climate change agreements as the first step in dissolving a paradigm that pits developed and developing countries against each other; as the end of the 'Third World' and the idea that we can ignore other people's problems. When I hear that international leaders for the first time in history have signed agreements regarding the world's temperature, I know we are entering a new era of global opportunity.
The crisis of climate change presents us with three critical opportunities: a moral opportunity to change what's negative about our systems, and help those in need; an economic opportunity to invest in the winning technologies of the future; and a political opportunity to form new international commitments that will strengthen all nations.
Now, if we could just agree on that, we might be getting somewhere!

An introduction to Global Warming

Global warming is the increase in the average temperature of Earth's near-surface air and oceans since the mid-20th century and its projected continuation. According to the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), global surface temperature increased 0.74 ± 0.18 °C (1.33 ± 0.32 °F) during the 20th century. Most of the observed temperature increase since the middle of the 20th century has been caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases, which result from human activity such as the burning of fossil fuel and deforestation. Global dimming, a result of increasing concentrations of atmospheric aerosols that block sunlight from reaching the surface, has partially countered the effects of warming induced by greenhouse gases.
Climate model projections summarized in the latest IPCC report indicate that the global surface temperature is likely to rise a further 1.1 to 6.4 °C (2.0 to 11.5 °F) during the 21st century. The uncertainty in this estimate arises from the use of models with differing sensitivity to greenhouse gas concentrations and the use of differing estimates of future greenhouse gas emissions. An increase in global temperature will cause sea levels to rise and will change the amount and pattern of precipitation, probably including expansion of subtropical deserts. Warming is expected to be strongest in the Arctic and would be associated with continuing retreat of glaciers,permafrost and sea ice.



Other likely effects include changes in the frequency and intensity ofextreme weather events, species extinctions, and changes in agricultural yields. Warming and related changes will vary from region to region around the globe, though the nature of these regional variations is uncertain. As a result of contemporary increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, the oceans have become more acidic, a result that is predicted to continue.
The scientific consensus is that anthropogenic global warming is occurring. Nevertheless, political and public debate continues. The Kyoto Protocol is aimed at stabilizing greenhouse gas concentration to prevent a "dangerous anthropogenic interference". As of November 2009, 187 states had signed and ratified the protocol.

whom to blame?

• Average temperatures have climbed 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 degree  Celsius) around the globe since 1880, a lot of this in recent decades,  in accordance with NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. • The speed of warming is increasing. The 20th century’s last twenty years  seem to have been the hottest in 400 years and possibly the warmest for some  millennia, according to a range of climate studies. And the United  Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) news that  11 of the past 12 years is some of the dozen warmest since 1850.

• The Arctic is feeling the outcomes essentially the most. Average temperatures in  Alaska, western Canada, as well as eastern Russia have risen at twice the  global average, according to the multinational Arctic Climate Effect  Assessment report compiled within 2000 and 2004.

• Arctic ice is quickly disappearing, and the region could have the first of all entirely ice-free summer by 2040 or before. Polar bears and indigenous cultures are already suffering from the sea-ice harm.

• Glaciers and mountain snows are quickly melting—for instance, Montana’s Glacier National Park at the moment have solely 27 glaciers, versus 150 in 1910. In the Northern  Hemisphere, thaws additionally come a week before in spring plus freezes commence one week later.<span class="full post">