Over-Time For A New Environmental Protocol
Hand-wringings abound with respect to the ongoing and very visible signs of degradation of our global environment. Downright frightening. Regardless of initiation, the impetus with which the alterations in our normal atmospheric conditions are undergoing change demands closer scrutiny and more effective, clearer, and nearer-in-time deliberations in counteracting their effects.
No one wants to accept responsibility. No one wants to act responsibly. It affects the bottom line. For industry, for production of goods and services. For the enrichment of a country's gross domestic product. No one wants to be left behind in the global race to economic success and possible market dominance. And human nature being what it is, no one wants to obligate themselves to be less of a consumer.
But it's become a double race; on the one hand, all these national economies jubilant at their newfound excesses - on the other hand, the fall-out of charging ahead is steadily accelerating an already-deteriorating environment. One we all share. We have no other. Some areas of this globe will be far less seriously affected than others. But if even the least-case scenario eventually is realized low-lying areas of the world will be inundated from rising oceans resulting from melting ice-caps, and differing weather patterns will impact on agriculture.
Weather patterns have been proven to swing from mini ice ages to mini warming periods. It's there in the fossil records, even in the shorter-term historical records where we see from written history that climate has changed elaborately and distinctly through a wide swing from hot to cold. Nature seems to cling to a balance for a thousand years or so, then swing around to another scale, then repeat itself.
But what we're now doing to our environment through the frantic burning of fossil fuels and sending carbon particulates into the atmosphere at a steadily growing rate is hastening Nature's process and further unsettling it. Scientists simply don't know how much of an effect human intervention in normal weather swings is attributable to our activities primarily or whether we're adding in a minor way to normal pattern swings.
According to a report in the journal Nature, though, we're setting about trying to stabilize our own deleterious outputs in the wrong way. The Kyoto Protocol, according to two authors, Gwyn Prins of the London School of Economics and Steve Rayner at Oxford, isn't going to do the trick.
In "Time to ditch Kyoto", they characterize Kyoto as "a symbolically important expression" of concern, "But as an instrument for achieving emissions reductions, it has failed. It has produced no demonstrable reduction in emissions or even in anticipated emissions growth. And it pays no more than token attention to the needs of societies to adapt to existing climate change.
"Kyoto's architects assumed that climate change would be best attacked directly through global emissions controls, treating tonnes of carbon dioxide like stockpiles of nuclear weapons to be reduced via mutually verifiable targets and timetables" they write. But, they point out this was too simplistic a response to a dreadfully complex problem, and a controversial one that has polarized scientists into two camps: acceptance and denial.
Basically, irrespective of interrupted weather patterns that Nature herself bestows upon our environment, mankind has developed a global construct of fossil fuel energy usage that has complicated normal weather patterns within a very short period of time relatively speaking, and altered these patterns in ways we cannot quite explain with any degree of conviction.
They point out that fewer than 20 countries worldwide are the heavies in this action, responsible for approximately 80% of carbon emissions, with China and the U.S. on top and Japan, India, Russia, Canada and Britain comprising a portion of the following emitters. Their conclusion is that because this is a world-wide commission of sins against the environment, a conjoined committed effort at restraint is required.
Headed by a focus on scientific enquiry and the formulation of new energy technologies to combat the problem. "It seems reasonable to expect the world's leading economies and emitters to devote as much money to this challenge as they currently spend on military research - in the case of the United States, about $80-billion a year."
The contention being that at least an equal amount must be committed to solving our problem through global adaptation efforts. In other words, we lead unsustainable lifestyles as individuals, and as nations, aspiring to ever greater acquisitions, country by country. Are we ever likely to want to give up our lavishly wasteful ways? Become peace-loving nations all, dedicated to the betterment of universal needs-solving?
And don't we always fall back on the comfortable thought that science and technology will find a way to eradicate problems as they erupt? But have we ever before faced an impending scenario of environmental collapse and the potential of species extinction, global population relocations, food and energy shortages, than we now do?
No one wants to accept responsibility. No one wants to act responsibly. It affects the bottom line. For industry, for production of goods and services. For the enrichment of a country's gross domestic product. No one wants to be left behind in the global race to economic success and possible market dominance. And human nature being what it is, no one wants to obligate themselves to be less of a consumer.
But it's become a double race; on the one hand, all these national economies jubilant at their newfound excesses - on the other hand, the fall-out of charging ahead is steadily accelerating an already-deteriorating environment. One we all share. We have no other. Some areas of this globe will be far less seriously affected than others. But if even the least-case scenario eventually is realized low-lying areas of the world will be inundated from rising oceans resulting from melting ice-caps, and differing weather patterns will impact on agriculture.
Weather patterns have been proven to swing from mini ice ages to mini warming periods. It's there in the fossil records, even in the shorter-term historical records where we see from written history that climate has changed elaborately and distinctly through a wide swing from hot to cold. Nature seems to cling to a balance for a thousand years or so, then swing around to another scale, then repeat itself.
But what we're now doing to our environment through the frantic burning of fossil fuels and sending carbon particulates into the atmosphere at a steadily growing rate is hastening Nature's process and further unsettling it. Scientists simply don't know how much of an effect human intervention in normal weather swings is attributable to our activities primarily or whether we're adding in a minor way to normal pattern swings.
According to a report in the journal Nature, though, we're setting about trying to stabilize our own deleterious outputs in the wrong way. The Kyoto Protocol, according to two authors, Gwyn Prins of the London School of Economics and Steve Rayner at Oxford, isn't going to do the trick.
In "Time to ditch Kyoto", they characterize Kyoto as "a symbolically important expression" of concern, "But as an instrument for achieving emissions reductions, it has failed. It has produced no demonstrable reduction in emissions or even in anticipated emissions growth. And it pays no more than token attention to the needs of societies to adapt to existing climate change.
"Kyoto's architects assumed that climate change would be best attacked directly through global emissions controls, treating tonnes of carbon dioxide like stockpiles of nuclear weapons to be reduced via mutually verifiable targets and timetables" they write. But, they point out this was too simplistic a response to a dreadfully complex problem, and a controversial one that has polarized scientists into two camps: acceptance and denial.
Basically, irrespective of interrupted weather patterns that Nature herself bestows upon our environment, mankind has developed a global construct of fossil fuel energy usage that has complicated normal weather patterns within a very short period of time relatively speaking, and altered these patterns in ways we cannot quite explain with any degree of conviction.
They point out that fewer than 20 countries worldwide are the heavies in this action, responsible for approximately 80% of carbon emissions, with China and the U.S. on top and Japan, India, Russia, Canada and Britain comprising a portion of the following emitters. Their conclusion is that because this is a world-wide commission of sins against the environment, a conjoined committed effort at restraint is required.
Headed by a focus on scientific enquiry and the formulation of new energy technologies to combat the problem. "It seems reasonable to expect the world's leading economies and emitters to devote as much money to this challenge as they currently spend on military research - in the case of the United States, about $80-billion a year."
The contention being that at least an equal amount must be committed to solving our problem through global adaptation efforts. In other words, we lead unsustainable lifestyles as individuals, and as nations, aspiring to ever greater acquisitions, country by country. Are we ever likely to want to give up our lavishly wasteful ways? Become peace-loving nations all, dedicated to the betterment of universal needs-solving?
And don't we always fall back on the comfortable thought that science and technology will find a way to eradicate problems as they erupt? But have we ever before faced an impending scenario of environmental collapse and the potential of species extinction, global population relocations, food and energy shortages, than we now do?
Labels: Environment, World News
posted by Pieface | 6:18 PM
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