Climate Change, it is time to act

Climate change and rising temperature has emerged as a serious threat to mankind with 2.6 billion poor across the globe more prone to this phenomenon. Changing weathers, unusual rainfall, precipitation, cyclones, floods, droughts, water scarcity, rising sea level, changing crop patterns, low yield and productivity have rung the alarm bells making the experts to join heads for coping with the situation.
Rapid industrialization, rising emissions, strifes, imprudent use and unrealistic approach to Natural resources brought the mankind to the verge of disasters. Cross-boundary effects of Climate Change are equally hazardous with developing nations suffering for the follies of the developed nations.
Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has recorded that just out of 12 most hot years since last 650,000 years, 11 fall in recent past. “The human race, have substantially altered the Earth’s atmosphere. In 2005, the concentration of CO2 exceeded the natural range that had existed over 650,000 years,” said Rajendra Pachauri, the Chairman of IPCC.
“Eleven of the warmest years since instrumental records have been kept, occurred during the last 12 years,” Pachauri noted at an interaction with Asian journalists. IPCC shares this year’s Nobel Peace Prize with former US Vice President Al Gore, for services in the arena of Climate Change.
As 40 per cent of the world’s population live in poverty, unable to meet daily basic needs and at a risk to face the impacts climate change and human development reversal.
It is affecting earth’s ecosystem and mankind dependent on this ecosystem, would be facing problems in water availability, agriculture produce and livelihood.
Statistics show, in 20th century the increase in average temperature was recorded at 0.74 degrees centigrade; sea level increased by 17 cm and a large part of the Northern Hemisphere snow cover vanished. Worrisome is the reduction in the mass balance of the glaciers and this has serious implications for the availability of water; something like 500 million people in South Asia and 250 million people in China are likely to be affected as a result.
“We also know that there are major precipitation changes that are taking place. We have seen several of these in recent years,” Pachauri said. Some regions are more vulnerable than others. The Arctic region is warming twice as fast as rest of the globe. Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole will probably see 75 to 250 million people being affected by water stress by 2020.
Small island states are under threat of sea level rise and would be affected by storm surges and cyclones. Asian mega deltas are extremely vulnerable to coastal floods including a number of heavily populated cities. Coral reefs, tundra, boreal forest as well as 20 to 30 percent of plant and animal species are in danger of extinction if temperature exceeds 1.5 to 2.5 degrees centigrade.
The IPCC projected temperature rising for this century between 1.8 C to 4 C. “The inertia of the system, which we have, is feared to continue for decades and centuries if we do not stabilize today the concentration of gases causing this problem,” Pachauri said.
He urged variety of measures as inevitable to bring about short term mitigation actions, though we may reap the benefits in decades.
Seeking immediate measures, the experts warned of upsurge in cost of adaptation and impacts, as the global temperature goes up.
If the concentration of gases causing climate change is stabilized at 445 to 490 parts per million of CO2 equivalent, it will limit the equilibrium increase to 2 to 2.4 degrees centigrade, that will cost the world less than 3 per cent of GDP in year 2030.
This means that the prosperity that we would normally be achieved by 2030, may be postponed by a few months at the most.
“We need to ensure that current emission level should be maintained up to 2015, and then bringing it down substantially,” the IPCC experts noted.
They describe incentives for technology development and a price on carbon, as absolutely crucial. In addition they also advise a pricing framework for developing low carbon technologies and disseminating on large scale, investment in climate-friendly energy infrastructure, changing lifestyle and behaviors.
In this scenario the mankind has two options; first to wait for catastrophic failures, systemic deficiencies, distortion and self-deceptions and secondly, providing for social checks and balances to correct for systemic distortion prior to catastrophic failures.
There is need for making realize the massive CO2 emitting countries like United States, Canada and Australia of their duties to the universe and forcing them to opt for measures that mitigate such emissions.
Developing nations and the regions more prone to this phenomenon also need to do their bit in effectively meeting this challenge.
It is time to move away from self-deception, and act prudently. The time matters much and we need to act now.

—Muhammad Aftab Zahoor  (APP)