ENVIRONMENT:

Environmental Emergency Looms as Governments Fail to Address Global Warming

A Report from the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil

Speaking from the World Social Forum, held Jan. 26-31 in Porto Alegre, Brazil, non-governmental organizations, academics, campaigners and social movements among others, underlined the emergency. “We are facing a huge crisis,” said Amit Srivastava of India Resource Center. Such claims were underscored by a report released earlier this month by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Called "Arctic Climate Change with a 2°C Global Warming" and written by Dr Mark New of Oxford University, the report revealed that we could face dangerous levels of climate change as early as 2026.

Prime among the human activities that have contributed to global warming is the excessive use of fossil fuels, which in turn leads to the accumulation of greenhouse gases.

Nowhere can this excessive use of fossil fuels be more clearly seen than in the US, which releases 24% of the world’s greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, though it has only 4% of the world’s population. This emissions percentage is greater than those of both China and India combined. Their combined populations represent 37% of the world’s population, while their emissions represent 18% of the total, according to Heidi Bachram of Carbon Trade Watch.

If over-consumption of fossil fuels is contributing to global warming, reduction of such fuels seems one obvious and necessary solution to the problem, along with finding alternative cleaner energy sources and halting deforestation.

This point was made clear during a recent government-organized conference in Exeter, UK, called "Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change: A Scientific Symposium on Stabilisation of Greenhouse Gases." Dr Catarina Cardoso, head of climate change at World Wildlife Fund (WWF), stated, “The government needs to take serious and credible action to tackle the problem of global warming head-on--starting with the biggest polluter, the power sector.”

And yet, governments are not taking the necessary steps, argued those present at the Porto Alegre conference, which, as an alterative to the Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, attracted over 100,000 participants.

Governments, it seems, are continuing with “business as usual,” said Jutta Kill, a climate change campaigner with Fern and panel speaker on Environmental Justice in Porto Alegre. In consequence, stated Catherine Pearce, a climate campaigner with Friends of the Earth, UK, “Your governments are failing you."

“We need to have phased out nearly all fossil fuels by 2050. Instead the opposite is happening,” said climate campaigner Dr. Roque Pedace of Friends of the Earth, Argentina.

Not only are governments failing to address the issue adequately but, argued panellists in Brazil, the focus of discussions addressing the problem are inherently flawed. “The official response is not to consume less oil but to increase the means of production,” stated Esperanza Martínez of Oil Watch.

While 156 countries have ratified the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, originally intended to limit emissions, the US, the world’s biggest polluter, has only signed it, thereby not made it binding. Other developed nations, by ratifying this treaty, agreed to limit their greenhouse gas emissions relative to the levels emitted in 1990.

Perhaps more crucially, some Porto Alegre speakers argued that the introduction of so-called flexible mechanisms in the treaty have left it a fundamentally flawed tool. Under the protocol, governments and companies can trade carbon to offset emissions. So called “carbon credits” can be bought from other countries. This, argued panellists, simply legitimizes the status quo, enabling richer countries to keep polluting.

The Kyoto Protocol, charged Marcelo Calazans, of FASE, a Brazilian development NGO, “has been hijacked to become a trading mechanism rather than a means to reduce emissions."

"We don’t want to give credence to this mechanism because the Kyoto Protocol sees this [environmental] problem in trading terms only,” echoed Souparna Lahiri of the Delhi Forum.

Lahiri added, “We have our own [developing country] problems such as deforestation, monoculture plantations, and privatization of water which the protocol does not address.” As Esperanza Martínez, of Oil Watch in Ecuador, pointed out: “Kyoto does nothing to ensure or encourage developing countries to reduce their level of polluting emissions.”

One of the key winners of this trading scheme is the World Bank, which, according to Nadia Martinez of the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies, acts as a middleman. For every transaction, she points out, the bank stands to gain a 5% commission. According to Carbon Trade Watch's Heidi Bachram, recent figures from Ken Newcombe, manager of the Prototype Carbon Fund in the World Bank, estimate the carbon market at $7 billion annually.

Moreover, according to WWF, renewable energy technologies, such as wind, biomass, geothermal and solar electricity, “are not only available but in many cases would save consumers money.”

In this scenario of continued global warming, the losers will tend to be southern and developing countries, argued the Delhi Forum’s Souparna Lahiri. Bangladesh, for example, is already prone to flooding, and this could increase by up to 40 percent this century due to global warming, according to New Scientist magazine. The island of Tuvalu in the South Pacific is already developing evacuating procedures due to rising sea levels.

They are not alone. Robin Bronen, a Social Forum participant from Alaska, described extreme weather conditions over the past two years, with no snow two years ago (“which is unheard of”), while this year “it wouldn’t stop snowing.” Despite these signs of climate change, there are plans to drill for oil in the Arctic, said Bronen.

Faced with this situation, organizers of the conference said civil society had to protest and demand that governments address the issue. The debate needs to incorporate those who are affected, rather than just the oil and gas companies and other industry players who have been heavily consulted until now, argued Fern’s Jutta Kill. Governments need to invest and subsidize in cleaner alternatives as well as enforce regulation, she stated.

“We all have a part to play--we can change our habits, by being more conscious of our energy and water consumption,” urged Catherine Pearce. But, she stressed, one thing is clear: “We are running out of time, and the longer we postpone dealing with this [problem], the harder it will become.”