GLOBAL MELTDOWN
The catalogue of disasters that are happening right now
Across the planet, rising temperatures are taking their toll
CARBON DIOXIDE
New research has found that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere - the main cause of global warming - are higher than at any time in the past 625,000 years. HOTTEST EVER
This year is expected to be the warmest ever recorded; 1998 was the hottest so far, but the past three years currently occupy the next three places.
DESERTIFICATION
The giant Kalahari desert, already four times the size of Britain, threatens to become larger still, covering farmland in Namibia, Botswana and South Africa.
EXPANDING OCEANS
The level of the world's seas and oceans is rising twice as fast as in the past, as their waters expand in rising temperatures and glaciers melt.
OCEAN EXILES
The people of the Carteret Islands, a scattering of atolls off Papua New Guinea in the South Pacific, have started to leave as their homes succumb to rising seas.
HURRICANES
Hurricane Epsilon - the 14th of the year - is forming in the Atlantic, even though the worst recorded hurricane season by far formally ended on Wednesday.
GLACIER MELT
Greenland glaciers have suddenly started racing towards the sea and melting. Much the same is beginning to happen to glaciers in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
WATER SHORTAGE
Areas such as the western USA, which depend on mountain snows for their water supplies, are running short as less snow falls - and what does fall melts earlier.
DISAPPEARING SPECIES
Sealife and birdlife have declined catastrophically this year along America's north-west Pacific coast, after a similar meltdown in the North Sea.
CORAL REEFS
Corals on the Great Barrier Reef are bleaching out and dying as sea temperatures rise and scientists fear that the whole reef may perish by 2050.
Also in this section
The Global Commons Institute (GCI) is calling for equity to be at the core of the global movement to stop climate change. To entrench this it advocates a pattern of ‘Contraction and Convergence’. Aubrey Meyer from the GCI explains.
Contraction and Convergence means, in a nutshell, that all the countries that make up the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) would agree a revisable global greenhouse gas emissions 'contraction budget'. This would secure a precautionary and safe future stable value for the rising greenhouse gas concentrations - say 80% cuts globally by 2060. If we were lucky this level of cuts would return atmospheric concentrations to today's value within a hundred years and limit the worst of the damage.
A rapid and orderly retreat from fossil fuel dependency in favour of clean and renewable forms of energy is obviously needed. And if there is any agreement to have international emissions trading, it must be structured to this end and secured on the basis of equity, as Contraction and Convergence, and even the UN’s own Climate Convention, require. As such, trade may play a vital part in preventing catastrophic changes in the climate by hastening the avoidance of emissions.
Contraction and Convergence is just a framework for the numerous and diverse practical actions and changes that are necessary to save the planet from climate change disaster. It is not a cure-all. But it may well be politically necessary if there is to be an effective, precautionary agreement at the global level.
Key to Contraction and Convergence is the need for it to also be empowering at a local level. With reference to the larger scheme, people can use the same argument to organise for equity within their societies and communities in their own countries. This is a radical approach – one which re-normalises equity at each level of political discourse.
Locally, nationally and globally, we all need an agreement to secure fragile and finite resources. Strengthening broad strategies to reach some agreement will not be easy. However, continuing our current behaviour is no more than an endgame for humanity with the rich finally committing suicide by continuing to rob the poor.
It is morally but also practically sensible to avoid this. Contraction and Convergence thus presents the simple idea of equity for survival. It puts the need to protect people and planet ahead of the need for profits. In practice we all do have equal responsibilities in this but it can only work as part of an overall agreement that is sustainable in total secured on the principle of equal rights.
See also Shrinking the Carbon Economy
Threads: Climate Change