Climate Change, Who Cares?

June 5, 2008 | In: Go Green

Climate change is a very real phenomenon and the evidence for it abounds: global surface temperatures have risen, current temperatures are the highest in recorded history, amounts of global snowfall and permanent ice have declined over the years and global sea levels continue to rise.

Following last year’s climate change conference in Bali, much of the main policy discourse on climate change has been focused on the importance of forests in mitigating climate change, particularly through the Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) scheme.

Deforestation releases greenhouse gases (GHGs), of which CO2 is the main culprit, and reduces the forests’ capacity to absorb GHGs. The REDD plan sells itself as a mitigator of climate change through two modes: by reducing emissions and by enhancing the forests’ capacity to absorb carbon. The potential for GHG reduction through REDD, along with other mitigation techniques, is considered very high.

However, emissions from global deforestation contribute only 20 percent of human-generated GHG emissions. Most GHG emissions come from the use of fossil fuels in transportation, industry, domestic and commercial applications and so on.

Therefore, assuming current patterns on the use of fossil fuels stay the same, carbon emissions into the atmosphere will remain high — in short, the roles of forests as carbon sinks are much less significant than previously touted.

To a certain extent, forests do absorb carbon from the atmosphere, but if the CO2 concentration continues to increase (because of the burning of fossil fuels), then forests will become more vulnerable and risk being an additional factor in increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Campaigns have cropped up in both developing and developed countries that attempt to sell the forest solution as a viable offset to the use of fossil fuels. Mass media quote “government officials” as saying forest-related GHG reduction schemes are “the most cost-effective”.

What this means in effect is the economy is always the top priority, and developed countries will not put their economies at risk to deal with climate change.

Reducing the uses of fossil fuel in industry will have a pass-on effect to the economy, especially since “cleaner” sources of energy, although in existence for many years, are not yet cheap enough to be an economically viable replacement for the much cheaper fossil fuels.

It is obvious much work still needs to be done to make renewable energy more accessible and less ethereal. This means that to a large extent the global society will still find the conventional-polluting technologies.

Industrialized nations are reluctant to sacrifice their fossil fuel-based economy, and thus contribute the lion’s share of global CO2 emissions — yet they have the temerity to blame developing nations for damaging their forests.

The United States alone contributes more than 20 percent of global CO2 emissions even though it accounts for less than 5 percent of the world’s population. So it should come as no surprise the U.S. still refuses to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

It is very clear forest-related CO2 reduction schemes are not the answer for climate change in the long term. REDD and other similar schemes should be seen as a transitional phase toward a low carbon economy. The main challenge is therefore how to reduce emissions from fossil fuel use.

This needs commitment from developed nations, the main global CO2 emitters. If they are still reluctant to do so, as many apparently are, climate change and its profound consequences will be felt even harder.