From
the Editor: Akhtar
Mahmud Faruqui
December 09, 2005
UN Climate
Change Conference
Last Saturday saw a sudden surge
in the world’s concern for the environment.
Environmentalists occupied the center stage in 30
countries as they staged marches from Sydney to
London to urge governments to lower emissions of
heat-trapping gases.
Banging drums and dressed as polar bears demonstrators
in Montreal, where a UN conference on pollution
brought the world’s leading environmental
groups together, pressed for restricting the burning
of fossil fuels in factories, power plants and cars.
“The ice is melting, we’re suffering
the most, we can’t get food,” said Gordon
Shepherd, a Scottish activist dressed as a polar
bear.
“We will move the world ahead,” Elizabeth
May of the Sierra Club environmental group spiritedly
told the vociferous crowd, estimated at about 6,000
people.
“Together we can save the climate. Together
we will stop fossil fuel from destroying our future,”
she resolved outside the conference center, where
representatives of 189 nations are meeting from
November 28-December 9 to reverse the progressive
rise in the burning of fossil fuel.
Similar sentiments were echoed in London. Blowing
whistles and carrying banners thousands of protesters
accused British Prime Minister Tony Blair of going
back on pledges to contain carbon dioxide production.
“No Blair betrayal on climate” one banner
demanded. “We’re seeing greenhouse gas
emissions rise under this government. We’re
seeing this government now not talking about targets,
talking about technology instead,” said Caroline
Lucas, a prominent member of Britain’s Green
party.
Are environmentalists justified in branding fossil
fuel the villain as the world feels the catastrophic
effects of the worsening environmental scene? The
answer – a reiteration of what has been stated
in these columns before - is simple and convincing.
The outstanding change heralding the advent of the
Industrial Revolution was the innovation in the
use of energy, with steam taking the place of animal,
wind, and hydropower. Fossil fuels - coal, gas,
and oil - which catalyzed the change, polluted the
air and their harmful residues found their way into
rivers and oceans.
As technology proliferated and factories crisscrossed
the landscape, fossil fuel was burned in stupendous
quantities. During the first 83 years of the Industrial
Revolution, the world burned the first 50 billion
metric tons of fossil fuel. It took only 23 years
to burn the next 50, and barely 11 years to burn
the next, which brings us to almost the present
time.
If the current trend is any indication the next
50 billion metric tons will be extracted and consumed
in only 8 years. By the year 2032 AD, such an amount
will be extracted and consumed in one year alone!
The trend is disconcerting and unless a clean substitute
- one which does not pollute the air or water -
appears on the global scene the world will continue
to burn fossil fuel in large quantities to sustain
its industrial march and thus remain precariously
exposed to increasing levels of pollution.
Nuclear power, a clean, nonpolluting form of energy,
raised the hopes of many optimists that the atom
would free man of his unwholesome reliance on fossil
fuel. The promise was stupendous. It still remains
so, despite the setback following the Three Mile
Island and Chernobyl accidents. Nuclear power reactors
have been described, and rightly so, as inexhaustible
sources of energy. Perhaps fissile fuel will succeed
where fossil fuel has failed.
But it was not the burning of fossil fuel at the
advent of the Industrial Revolution that singly
contributed to pollution. Industrialization led
to urbanization and its attendant problems of pollution.
Until 1800 AD, 80-95 percent of the population of
England, where the Industrial Revolution made its
first appearance, had turned urban, and by the 1900,
only 10 percent of the country’s population
was tilling the soil. The remaining was employed
in factories!
The growth of new industrial cities, particularly
in Britain, denoted a major failure of imagination
- a dreary look, lack of playgrounds, little effort
to plan streets according to the sun and wind, poor
public services, polluted air, etc. No wonder, William
Blake called factories ‘black Satanic mills.’
Yet the early industrial cities grew faster than
others. In the United States, cities of over 8,000
inhabitants grew five times faster than the country
as a whole in the 19th century. Big cities in particular
grew at an astounding pace: London reached the one
million mark in 1800, Paris in 1850, Berlin and
Vienna in 1880, and St. Petersburg in 1870.
Today, there are a hundred cities with population
equaling or exceeding the one million mark, a hundred
cities which are the size of Rome at its height,
and many much larger!
The trend continues. Tokyo’s population today
approximates 26 million while Cairo houses 16 million
and Mexico City 31.6 million. Indications are manifest
that the world of the future will be a world of
cities.
The demographic pattern in the last 2000 years also
makes interesting reading. A phenomenal growth in
world population has taken place since man took
to industry. The accelerated growth is in no way
attributable to the advent of technology, but in
the years to come, it may cast its shadow on the
pollution problem.
The world population stood at 250 million in 1 AD,
500 million 1500 AD, 1,000 million 1825 AD, 2,000
million in 1925 AD, 4000 million in 1975, and 6,000
million in the year 2000. Thus the doubling period
has been drastically reduced - from the first 1500
to 325, 100 and 50 years. ‘Global 2000’
rightly predicts that the astronomical demographic
explosion would severely test the carrying capacity
of planet Earth.
It is thus not difficult to envision the future
- an overly populated world and the accompanying
specter of pollution. “Shall we surrender
to our surroundings, or shall we make peace with
Nature and begin to make reparations for the damage
we have done to our air, to our land, and to our
water?” asked Richard Nixon in 1970.
Both the developed and the developing world have
to contemplate the answer to conserve a livable
world. The environmentalists’ anguish in the
30 cities of the world on Saturday was more than
justified.
- afaruqui@pakistanlink.com
