From
the Editor: Akhtar
Mahmud Faruqui
February
09, 2007
Paris Report
on the Environment
A US geological survey recently
found that polar bear cubs in Alaska’s Beaufort
Sea were less likely to survive compared to about
20 years ago. Reason: melting sea ice. “The
effects of greenhouse warming are starting to rear
their ugly head,” says Mark Serreze, a scientist
at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the
University of Colorado in Boulder. Another researcher,
Marika Holland, working at the National Center for
Atmospheric Research, projects a slow, steady decline
of arctic ice as global warming continues, with
a dramatic “tipping point” in about
two decades.
On February 2, an international group of scientists
issued somber findings to furnish fresh proof that
fossil fuel account for the present disconcerting
environmental scene. “Even if the industrial
nations start to immediately reduce emissions of
carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases,
the past and future gases will continue to contribute
to global warming and the rise of oceans for more
than 1,000 years,” warns the long-awaited
report released in Paris.
“The release of the international assessment,
heralded by shutting off lights in the Eiffel Tower
for five minutes as the scientists rushed to finish,
comes after six years of work and is built on a
previous dozen years of study by hundreds of researchers
from more than 100 nations. In the next two months,
two more bodies of work dealing with different aspects
of climate change will be released,” says
the report.
How did it all begin and what needs to be done to
save the environment from further damage? Are environmentalists
justified in branding fossil fuel the villain as
the world feels the catastrophic effects of the
worsening environmental scene? The answer is simple
and convincing. Which brings us to a reiteration
of the argument spelled out several times in these
columns.
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 alone that 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 transformed the
landscape, had turned urban, and by the 1900, only
10 percent of the country’s population was
tilling the soil. The remaining was gainfully employed
in factories!
The growth of new industrial cities, particularly
in Britain, unmistakably denoted what historians
described as ‘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 growing,
as historians testify, 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.
- afaruqui@pakistanlink.com
