Copenhagen or bust!

Anthropogenic climate change, or the disruption being caused through human activities releasing the three most potent greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide) is still, according to surveys, not accepted by some non-scientific people. It seems the more evidence that exists then the more some people will deny a proven event had or is happening. Coping with something that threatens to overwhelm maybe one explanation, or belief in conspiracies to fool ordinary people is another.
Local newspapers have recently carried letters from readers clearly frightened by the prospect of what climate change is predicted to bestow on our living world. They describe how difficult it is for them to believe man is responsible. I have sympathy with them and anyone who simply cannot come to terms with the fact we have a serious problem, one which has a magnitude greater than anything faced by mankind in the past.
It is understandable to feel comfort or belief in a few reports which attempt to dismiss human activity being the main driver or cause for making the planet’s temperature rise rapidly. The last 50 years have shown the greatest rise in greenhouse gases and
Charles Darwin had the same problem when he saw the evidence for animal and man’s evolution. Some people today still think humans are not part of the animal kingdom and haven’t evolved from a branch of primates. They are not conspiracy theorists, but believe exactly what the Bible says. Comprehension and believability are stretched in many ways in our daily lives, although we are wiser than we have ever been to what might be fiction rather than scientific fact.
Some people believe the government stands to benefit by ‘inventing climate change disasters’ in order to raise money through green taxes. I can think of better ways they could achieve the same without inventing such an elaborate ploy. Without water pouring into our homes, crops dying of drought, or hurricane winds becoming a frequent occurrence, there will be some who say the news and ‘global warmers’ are scaremongering or that they read the planet is going through a cycle of natural change that will all get better in years to come.
One correspondent wrote that where ‘global warming’ was once used ‘they’ now call it ‘climate change’ to scare us more! In case you haven’t understood how excess green house gasses give rise to global warming which in turn leads to climate change – which is not the same as the weekly change in weather patterns forecast by the Met Office – then it is your knowledge of the science rather than those science writers that’s at fault.
Like everyone else, I would rejoice and sleep easy if we could solve the problem or find a solution that would let the human race get back to normal and stop mitigating or having to adapt to an ever more unstable environment. Of course that doesn’t let us off the hook of the other disasters we will face if world population cannot be controlled, food shortages overcome, or loss of habitats and pollution stopped that threaten almost every wild animal species, let alone the search for alternative forms of reliable clean energy to replace the dwindling supplies of fossil fuels, with their rise in price to levels that will be out of reach of ordinary working citizens.
The summit of world leaders in Copenhagen has already been talked about as doomed before the politicians have even sat down together. Attempts to negotiate the deals and agreements to cut carbon dioxide emissions in advance have stalled and the prospects look bleak unless some breakthrough is found. Drama is also part of the picture when the stakes are high, so whether it will be singing in the streets – “wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen” – or “Copenhagen, we are bust” only time will tell.
We are also told this is a last chance opportunity to broker the kind of deals that will give us the best chance of avoiding disastrous climate change chaos or going past the Tipping Point into non-retrievable climate stability. Maybe some of those world leaders don’t believe the science or they are prepared to chance it rather than lose their country’s industrial wealth and income. Only the intelligent ones will listen to the mass of scientific evidence or see how not agreeing to the cuts will be political suicide, even genocide, if millions of the poorest people around the world, in the most vulnerable situations, lose their lives through anthropogenic climatic change.
Whilst financial institutions and politicians have been found not to be the most trustworthy in society, I cannot think of anything that the scientific community, world-wide, have tried to make us believe and has been found to be a deception. On the contrary, science takes the sceptical approach and needs irrefutable evidence before eminent scientists place their faith in something. For now I would rather believe the scientific community and go all out to curb our carbon emissions rather than wait for ‘unprecedented’ climate disruption and risk passing the tipping point of C02 concentrations that could be unstoppable.
What can any individual do about all this? What can the world’s scientists and the vast number of world-wide non-governmental organisations, charities, agencies, businesses and industries who understand what is happening do about this? What will prime ministers and presidents, governments and the United Nations do to make the Copenhagen climate summit resolve to do everything that’s humanly possible to avert this danger?
The answer will come soon enough.
The UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen takes place from 7-18 December 2009

Paul Lund