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Rising global temperatures will speed the melting of glaciers and
ice caps and cause early ice thaw on rivers and lakes.
If somebody is offering you as beachfront home
for give away prices it will be because of global warming and
climate changes or the crash of the world property and housing
markets. Both are man-made and greed driven. Both are catastrophic
events for the poor who are least able to cope with natural
disasters and now face factory closures and a world economy in
recession. Food prices are racing to an all time high and
malnutrition is spreading like a plague.
Global warming due to the excessive emissions of
industrial CO2, the destruction of the tropical rain forests and the
release of methane from the melting permafrost of Siberia is melting
the Ice Mountains of the Arctic and Greenland and huge blocks of
Antarctica. The inevitable result is more water in the oceans that
rise to cover our precious beaches and coastal lands. Goodbye to
millions of beach houses, fishing villages, salt ponds, rice growing
deltas and the homes of millions.
There are other consequences too. Millions of
displaced people will struggle for food, water and living space and
migrate west to the lands of low populations and high surplus food
production. This will cause more conflict and even wars. Sounds like
a Biblical prophecy of doom and gloom? It is the coming reality
based on the indisputable scientific facts gathered over the past
twenty years and even before and we are fast reaching a tipping
point, the point of no return. When the process cannot be slowed or
halted. Global warming will accelerate as one threatening change
contributes to an even greater one. A threatening spiral of
disasters prompted lawmakers from developing nations to meet in
Manila last October and consider what can be done to be better
prepared for the worst.
Sen. Loren Legarda, co-convener of the meeting
called on the rich nations to help prepare the developing nations to
be ready to cope with the rapidly approaching “cycle of
catastrophe and tragedy.” The declaration said “Industrialized
countries have a historical responsibility for climate change and
are morally obliged to financially and technologically assist
developing countries in their efforts to reduce their vulnerability
and adapt to its consequences, while reducing their own greenhouse
gas emissions.”
According to OneWorld, a UK charity, “Research
by the UK-based International Institute for Environment and
Development shows that the 100 countries most vulnerable to climate
change together account for just 3.2 percent of global carbon
dioxide emissions.”
So once again it is the poor who are suffering
for the irresponsibility of the rich and will continue to do so. The
effects of global warming will cause them untold hardship,
deprivation and great social upheavals. The wealthy nations that are
causing the problem in the first place have a grave responsibility
to alleviate these consequences.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has
taken up this issue of social injustice caused by climate change and
is examining the relations between climate change and the violation
of human rights. Kate Raworth has produced a report for Oxfam, a UK
development and relief organization. “Climate change was first
seen as a scientific problem, then an economic one. Now it is
becoming a matter of international justice,” she wrote.
There is no legal way as yet for the poor
nations to challenge these polluters and destroyers of the
environmental furnace. There may have to be a special international
court of climate change settlements established to hold the
polluters to account. Until then we have to continue to lobby and
campaign for the rich industrial nations to set the goal of an 80
percent cut in CO2 emissions by the year 2050 and not settle for the
lower 50 percent cut they envisage. In the Philippine Archipelago
millions are vulnerable to the rise in global temperature and the
rise in ocean levels will cover islands and wipe out coastal
villages. Now is the time to establish a global fund that can meet
this challenge. We can all do something positive that will help make
this a cleaner and better, and hopefully, less polluted world it is.
preda@info.com.ph
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