THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT
The Greenhouse Effect



THE CLIMATE CONVENTION

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has pooled the work of hundreds of scientists. Its first report, which appeared in 1990, helped persuade 150 nations to sign a Climate Convention at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. The panel maintains that if CO2 is doubled, the amplifier effect could produce a total warming of 2.5°C. A few maverick dissenting voices can be heard. But, says IPCC science chairman Sir John Houghton, former head of Britain's Meteorological Office, "Scientifically, the quality of their work is pathetic."
Warming on this scale would have major effects. As ice melts, sea levels will rise, flooding low lying land, perhaps obliterating entire nations in the Pacific Ocean. As the atmosphere's energy balance changes, there could be dramatic changes in the weather in some parts of the world, causing massive fluctuations in temperature and rainfall, and greatly altering crop growing seasons.

Climate models suggest that many deserts will spread. North African sands will invade the Mediterranean; the dust bowl will return to the American Midwest. Were the 1980s drought victims of Ethiopia and Sudan greenhouse victims? Nobody knows, but these are the kinds of things that scientists warn will happen if the world continues to warm up.
A cartoon about the environment

NGOs like WWF campaign to alert people and governments to the dangers of climate change

The Rio Climate Convention calls on industrialized nations to return their greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2000. Beyond that, it declares as the "ultimate objective... the stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system." And that should be done in time "to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change." Thus, in theory at least, the convention enshrines the "precautionary principle" that it is better to be safe than sorry.

Since Rio, talks on the treaty itself, and its interpretation, have been in the hands of an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC). In Berlin in March 1995, the INC hands over to the first formal meeting of the states that have ratified the convention. The meeting will face some hard questions left unanswered in the convention text:


  • What happens after the year 2000? Currently, there are no targets at all past that date.

  • Some governments have already observed that the convention doesn't go far enough. To be effective, how much should greenhouse gases be cut, and by when?

  • Can countries keep on emitting more CO2, providing they plant trees to absorb the gas from the air?

  • At what level should the world ultimately aim to stabilize greenhouse gases in the air?


The one certainty that the parties to the Climate Convention face is that the commitments made in it fall a long way short of its declared aims. According to Houghton, "If we stabilize emissions at current levels, concentrations of greenhouse gases will carry on rising in the air for several hundred years. That is clearly not acceptable."

According to the IPCC, to stabilize concentrations of the gases in the air at current levels, we must immediately cut CO2 emissions by 60 per cent.

A middle way might prevent economic instability and climatic chaos. It would require major progressive cuts in emissions after the year 2000. The World Energy Council says that, with the most ambitiously "green" energy scenario, concentrations would still rise by another 20 per cent and not fall back until around the middle of the next century. Is that good enough?

The convention requires all nations to measure both their emissions of greenhouse gases and socalled "sinks", such as forests, that absorb the gases. And they must devise national plans to meet the convention's aims. Those plans could include measures such as:


  • Investment in energy efficiency and in climate friendly energy, for example solar and wind power.

  • Changes in transport policies to discourage cars, to encourage public transport

  • Some system of carbon taxes, to reflect the damage caused by CO2 emissions and to encourage reductions in those emissions.

  • Education of consumers about how to change their lifestyles to cut their personal contribution to the greenhouse effect.



NGOS AND CLIMATE CHANGE


Global warming threatens so many aspects of our environment that all but the most specialist green campaigning groups have made it part of their work. Wildlife organizations know that climate change could overwhelm all their activities, while transport campaigners have found a new focus.

To help coordinate these activities, and to improve the knowledge of smaller groups, the larger campaigning organizations, such as WWF, have established and help fund the Climate Action Network. The network also tracks the activities of energy industry lobbyists in their increasing efforts to undermine the scientific claims about the greenhouse effect.




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Copyright 1996, The World Wide Fund For Nature