Image: An Inconvenient Truth
Climate Crisis Update 5-16-07: Business & Government Must Be Compelled to Accept Responsibility, But So Must Each Individual
By Richard Power
Lake Chad and Lake Victoria are drying up.
The Himalayan glaciers, India's number one source of fresh water, are melting.
The climate of the USA will not be spared: "Future eastern United States summers look much hotter than originally predicted with daily highs about 10 degrees warmer than in recent years by the mid-2080s."
Bangkok has become the second of the world's great cities to turn off its lights in an awareness raising act. Which US city will be the first to do the same?
Business and government must be compelled to accept responsibility for coping with this planetary crisis, but so must each individual and each family.
Personal choices about lifestyle make a difference: "An average U.S. citizen requires 10 hectares of the planet to support his or her lifestyle, while an average European needs over five hectares. An average person in Africa, by contrast, draws on about one hectare of the earth's resources to live."
Here are some brief excerpts of relevant news stories, with links to the full texts:
Rising temperatures in Africa are blamed for droughts, floods and storms while the continent's fabled wildlife is struggling to adapt to shifting ecosystems that could lead to mass extinctions.
Scientists say Africa -- the world's poorest continent -- is already paying a high price for global climate change and must now figure out what it can do itself to slow the transformation.
"There has been an observable upward trend in temperatures in parts of Africa, for example in parts of eastern and central Africa and the (southern African) Cape area, as well as emergent water shortages in western Chad and Darfur regions," said Professor Bob Scholes of South Africa's Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research.
"Apart from these factors we have also witnessed an upward spread in bird and fish species, such as the savannah birds, which have migrated due to warmer temperatures."
Experts say global warming may be to blame for the gradual melting of snow atop Tanzania's famed Mt. Kilimanjaro, while Babagana Ahmadu, the African Union's director of rural economy and agriculture, says there is evidence that Lake Victoria, Lake Chad and parts of the Nile River are all gradually drying up due to warmer temperatures. Reuters, 9-15-07
The glaciers of the Himalayas store more ice than anywhere on Earth except for the polar regions and Alaska, and the steady flow of water from their melting icepacks fills seven of the mightiest rivers of Asia.Now, due to global warming and related changes in the monsoons and trade winds, the glaciers are retreating at a startling rate, and scientists say the ancient icepacks could nearly disappear within one or two generations.
Curiously, there’s little sense of crisis in some of the mountainous areas. Indeed, global warming is making the lives of some high-altitude dwellers a little less severe. ... But for people living in the watershed of the Himalayas and other nearby mountain ranges along the Tibetan Plateau, glacial melt could have catastrophic consequences.
Himalayan glaciers release water steadily throughout the year, most critically during the hot, dry, sunny periods when water is most needed. Once they vanish, major lifeline rivers such as the Ganges and Indus could become more seasonal, and large tributaries may dry up completely during non-monsoon periods. Tim Johnson, McClatchy, 5-12-07
Future eastern United States summers look much hotter than originally predicted with daily highs about 10 degrees warmer than in recent years by the mid-2080s, a new NASA study says.
Previous and widely used global warming computer estimates predict too many rainy days, the study says. Because drier weather is hotter, they underestimate how warm it will be east of the Mississippi River, said atmospheric scientists Barry Lynn and Leonard Druyan of Columbia University and NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
"Unless we take some strong action to curtail carbon dioxide emissions, it's going to get a lot hotter," said Lynn, now a scientist at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. "It's going to be a lot more dangerous for people who are not in the best of health." Associated Press, 5-11-07
Thailand's capital turned the lights out Wednesday in an effort to raise awareness of global warming, with six Bangkok neighbourhoods plunged into partial darkness for 15 minutes. Officials urged two million of the city's residents to join businesses and government offices in switching off non-essential lights at 7:00 pm (1200 GMT) to alert Thais to the ill-effects of climate change. At downtown shopping mall Central World Plaza, Thais put away their credit cards for a moment to ponder their energy consumption, as neon billboards and garishly-lit shop windows were dimmed. ... Bangkok's lights-out campaign included a public screening in a downtown shopping district of the Oscar-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" by former US vice president Al Gore. Australian city Sydney held a similar exercise in April, with a one-hour blackout observed by 65,000 homes and 2,000 businesses, which organisers estimated cut normal energy use by 10 percent. Agence France Press, 5-9-07
An eleventh hour intervention by the Indian delegation at a major U.N. climate change conference ... pushed to centre stage the need for a dramatic shift in lifestyles rather than dependence on green-friendly technology for solutions to global warming. … "Changes in lifestyles and consumption patterns that emphasise resource conservation can contribute to developing a low-carbon economy that is both equitable and sustainable," stated the summary of the report for policy makers that was approved by the ninth session of the IPCC Working Group III.
"Changes in occupant behaviour, cultural patterns and consumer choice and use of technologies can result in considerable reduction in carbon dioxide emissions related to energy use in buildings," it added. ... According to the World Wildlife Fund, an average U.S. citizen requires 10 hectares of the planet to support his or her lifestyle, while an average European needs over five hectares. An average person in Africa, by contrast, draws on about one hectare of the earth's resources to live. Inter Press Service, 5-4-07
Want to wake people up to the US mainstream news media's complicity in misinforming the public on global warming and climate change? Click here for Media Matters' compilation of "Myths and Falsehoods about Global Warming".
Want to participate in the effort to mitigate the impact of global warming? Download "Ten Things You Can Do"
There is a powerful magic in personal commitment.
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Richard Power is the founder of GS(3) Intelligence and Words of Power. His work focuses on the inter-related issues of security, sustainability and spirit, and how to overcome the challenges of terrorism, cyber crime, global warming, health emergencies, natural disasters, etc. You can reach him via e-mail: richardpower@wordsofpower.net. For more information, go to www.wordsofpower.net
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