Dr. Peter G Kinesa's Digest
COUNTERCURRENTS
The Urgent Need For Climate Action
Climate disaster seems a distant threat
One reason why the Glasgow Climate conference failed so miserably to produce urgently needed climate action was that humans tend to react to what is close to them. Money to pay the rent is urgent, while a climate catastrophe seems to be a distant threat.
Cultural inertia
A second reason is cultural inertia. All of us find it very difficult to make rapid changes in our lifestyles. Our educational and political systems also change very slowly. Automobile factories take a long time to build, and they continue to produce petroleum-driven vehicles. Many people earn their livings from the fossil fuel industry.
Avoiding climate disaster is a global problem
Finally, avoiding a climate catastrophe is an international problem. Historically, industrialized countries have been responsible for most of the greenhouse gas emissions, and people in less developed countries, such as India, feel that they therefore have a right to use their abundant coal to raise the standard of living and to combat poverty.
Warnings from the Antarctic and Arctic regions
Although the worst effects of catastrophic climate change lie in the distant future, there are recent warnings that tell us that a climate disaster may be nearer than we thought. The Arctic and Antarctic regions are warming more than twice as fast as the remainder of the world. In the Antarctic region, the vast Thwaites glacier, sometimes called “the Doomsday Glacier”, has recently exhibited so many cracks that scientists fear that it may shatter into small pieces like a windscreen. If this happens, the event may trigger the collapse of other nearby glaciers through a mechanism called “Marine Ice Cliff Instability”. This could mean several meters of sea level rise, threatening all coastal cities throughout the world.
