From
the Editor: Akhtar
Mahmud Faruqui
December 25 , 2009
The Elusive Climate Change Treaty
At eight feet below sea level, Pakistan's financial capital Karachi shows up on the list of the world's mega-cities threatened by global warming! So says Riaz Haq, our regular contributor, whose writings are unfailingly studded with valuable statistics. The revelation appears ominous especially as the recent UN climate change conference in Denmark seemed to generate more pessimism than optimism among the participants. European politicians and environmentalists were quick to express deep disappointment at the failure of world leaders to achieve a binding greenhouse-gas reduction agreement
Speaking by video link to participants at an energy conference, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown echoed his frustration: "I cannot hide my disappointment," said Brown. "We did not get the climate-change treaty. We are, however, still pressing for that, and I just want to say the campaign I envisage can be over the next few months."
Quite a few environmental groups, including Greenpeace, blamed the European Union for failing to push China and the United States in particular to adopt a tough agreement in Copenhagen. Greenpeace urged politicians to show resolve to reach what it called a "meaningful deal" next year.
Dr. Qamar-uz-Zaman Chaudhry, Director General, Pakistan Meteorological Department presented Pakistan’s vulnerability to climate change: he highlighted the impact of rising temperatures and global warming especially on the glaciers of Pakistan and their impact on the Indus water system.
The last year or two have seen a manifest surge in the world’s concern for the environment. Environmentalists have 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 an earlier 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. “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 were meeting to reverse the progressive rise in the burning of fossil fuel.
Similar sentiments were echoed in London. “We’re seeing greenhouse gas emissions rise under this government. We’re seeing this government now not talking about targets, talking about technology instead,” lamented 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 various parts of the world is more than justified.
- afaruqui@pakistanlink.com
