Our Mother Earth is in stress. We "first world-ers" are the biggest consumers and polluters on the planet, and we inhabit spaces in our everyday lives characterized by utter silence or lack of recognition of these things. Sure, there are scientists, technocrats, and policymakers working in search of discrete policy solutions, but when this impending crisis of colossal proportions is upon us, every single person on the planet has a stake in—and indeed, responsibility toward—this issue of climate change.
Check this out:
"Organic matter frozen in Arctic soils since before civilization began is now melting, allowing it to decay into greenhouse gases that will cause further warming, the scientists said. And the worst is yet to come, the scientists said in the second of three reports that are expected to carry considerable weight next year as nations try to agree on a new global climate treaty."The silence is deafening.
-Angela
Panel’s Warning on Climate Risk: Worst Is Yet to Come
YOKOHAMA,
Japan — Climate change is already having sweeping effects on every
continent and throughout the world’s oceans, scientists reported on
Monday, and they warned that the problem was likely to grow
substantially worse unless greenhouse emissions are brought under
control.
The report
by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations
group that periodically summarizes climate science, concluded that ice
caps are melting, sea ice in the Arctic is collapsing, water supplies
are coming under stress, heat waves and heavy rains are intensifying,
coral reefs are dying, and fish and many other creatures are migrating
toward the poles or in some cases going extinct.
The
oceans are rising at a pace that threatens coastal communities and are
becoming more acidic as they absorb some of the carbon dioxide given off
by cars and power plants, which is killing some creatures or stunting
their growth, the report found.
Organic
matter frozen in Arctic soils since before civilization began is now
melting, allowing it to decay into greenhouse gases that will cause
further warming, the scientists said. And the worst is yet to come, the
scientists said in the second of three reports that are expected to
carry considerable weight next year as nations try to agree on a new
global climate treaty.
Panel on U.N. Climate Change Report
Rajendra K. Pachauri, the chairman of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and Christopher Field, the
co-chairman of the group that wrote the report, discuss its warning.
Credit Christopher Jue/European Pressphoto Agency
In
particular, the report emphasized that the world’s food supply is at
considerable risk — a threat that could have serious consequences for
the poorest nations.
“Nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change,” Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the intergovernmental panel, said at a news conference here on Monday presenting the report.
The
report was among the most sobering yet issued by the scientific panel.
The group, along with Al Gore, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007
for its efforts to clarify the risks of climate change. The report is
the final work of several hundred authors; details from the drafts of
this and of the last report in the series, which will be released in
Berlin in April, leaked in the last few months.
The
report attempts to project how the effects will alter human society in
coming decades. While the impact of global warming may actually be
moderated by factors like economic or technological change, the report
found, the disruptions are nonetheless likely to be profound. That will
be especially so if emissions are allowed to continue at a runaway pace,
the report said.
It
cited the risk of death or injury on a wide scale, probable damage to
public health, displacement of people and potential mass migrations.
“Throughout
the 21st century, climate-change impacts are projected to slow down
economic growth, make poverty reduction more difficult, further erode
food security, and prolong existing and create new poverty traps, the
latter particularly in urban areas and emerging hot spots of hunger,”
the report declared.
The
report also cited the possibility of violent conflict over land, water
or other resources, to which climate change might contribute indirectly
“by exacerbating well-established drivers of these conflicts such as
poverty and economic shocks.”
The scientists emphasized that climate change is not just a problem of the distant future, but is happening now.
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