Urgent action needed on climate change
Updated
A a new book says even that is not enough, warning that the global warming threat to the planet has been drastically under-estimated.
Presenter: Sen Lam
Speaker: David Spratt, co-author Climate Code Red: The case for Emergency Action
LAM: David Spratt, first of all, is it to little to late?
SPRATT: The Australian Government scheme certainly is. If we contrast that which has made no promises about emissions and when they'll be cut, the prime minister was asked on Friday when it would actually reduce Australia's emissions and he said he couldn't say. Yet in the United States on Friday, Al Gore put out a really visionary plan saying, let's go to zero carbon electricity in ten years, so I think there's incremental and there's the transformitive.
LAM: Well, let's get down to basics here. A lot of people, in the public out there, still don't understand what a carbon emissions trading scheme is. Can you just explain very quickly for us?
SPRATT: It's a scheme which says we have to limit the amount of carbon pollution we put into the air, because it's poisoning the planet and the Australian Government's way of doing that is simply to set a limit, a maximum amount. If you want to put that pollution up there, you have to buy a permit, and the permit will cost you money, and as the number of permits is reduced, the price will go up, and so there will be incentives for people to do it a different way.
Unfortunately, some of the largest producers of greenhouse gas emissions are going to get free permits, which is going to undermine the scheme in my opinion.
LAM: Indeed, and some people are saying if your rich enough, you can just go ahead and continue polluting the earth?
SPRATT: Well, one of the problems we have is really a "First World/Third World" issue is that because there's international trading, rich countries can simply buy their permits or trade with the Third World and transfer their responsibilities to cut emissions to somebody else who is less able to do so, but financially needs to.
LAM: Well, the way world governments are going, particularly in the West, do you think the planet is destined to become a hostile environment for human beings?
SPRATT: Well, I think in some places it is becoming a hostile environment already. If we look at a place like Darfur, that has always said, that is the first climate change conflict in the world, so I think it's an existing reality. Certainly in the Pacific, where people are having to leave islands. It's today's question, not tomorrow's question. Will that spread wider? It really depends on whether we can act very quickly and at great depth to reduce our emissions, and obviously those countries who are emitting the most and Australia and the United States are really at the top of the table there have to take the lead. We have the moral responsibility to act first.
LAM: Well let's move closer to the region. The Himalayas, for instance, it has huge wide ranging implications there?
SPRATT: This is a terrible and frightening story if it were to become true, the climate scientists are saying if we continue on our present political trajectory, and there is a certain inertia in the political system, as well as in the climate system. They are saying that the Himalayas might be ice free in 50 years. Now the seven great rivers of Asia, I mean from China all the way round to Pakistan run off the Himalayas. It's not such a problem in the wet season, where there are supplies of water. But in the dry season, it's actually the melting in spring of those Himalayan glaciers that keep the people in those valleys alive, and we know in the valleys that run off the Himalayas, there is 1.3 billion people. So this is a question almost beyond understanding I think.
LAM: And what about South East Asia? What climate change implications are there for that region?
SPRATT: Well, we know that and it's happening already, the climate patterns will change. There are predictions for example, that the northern Chinese monsoon will weaken and we've seen drought in northern China, so that's starting to come true. There are predictions that in other parts, for example, over Bangladesh and the Bay of Bengal, the monsoons will become more intense and we've seen that. The other question, of course, is sea level rises. We know how much of Asia, particularly the large Asian cities, Shanghai, Bangkok, Mumbai are very close to sea level rises. And there is talk that with the rapid warming of the Arctic and the loss of ice from Greenland, that we have to consider sea level rises of between two and five metres in the next 100 years, and that would end life in some of those cities.
LAM: David, tell us about Professor James Hansen, of the NASA Goddard Institute of Space Science. Can you distil for us his climate change message?
SPRATT: James Hansen is the most prominent climate scientist in America. He first gave testimony to the Congress 20 years ago. Last month, he went back to Congress on the 20th anniversary of his first testimony. I think it was a sad anniversary, because the sort of changes he thought would happen hadn't, and in that testimony last month, he said all the elements of a perfect storm, a global cataclysm are already assembled. And his great concern is because there's a gap between when we put the carbon emissions up there, and the affect, and he says for the current level of greenhouse gases in the air. Even if we don't put one more tonne of it up there, he thinks there is another two degrees in the system to come, and two degrees would mean no ice in the Northern Hemisphere, large sea level rises. So his concern is that we actually have to reduce the amount of carbon in the air. We've actually got to get the planet back to a safe level. He said that very promptly in December, and there's now I think a large understanding that we've gone to far and we have to retreat.
LAM: Well, it's a very frightening message, but why is the message not getting through to world governments do you think?
SPRATT: Governments act very short term. I think in many cases, they act in an incremental way. Government in many ways is about political trade offs, about surviving till the next election, about getting the story off the front page of the newspaper, large transformative action, which is what we need on climate I think is difficult for governments everywhere. There is a range of scientific opinion. The precautionary approach will be to take the most serious predictions and work to avoid them. But if you want to take a middle of the range prediction, you can come up with different policy outcomes, that really what's happened, and that's going to cause us a large amount of trouble, because we know with global warming, that the emissions are rising faster than any of the predictions, the impacts are happening more quickly than any of the scientific reports expected, and therefore the problem as come upon us more quickly than we thought.
LAM: So going back to Professor Hansen. Even if we started acting now, do you think we could turn back the clock if you like? For instance the oceans, could we restore some of the oceans' goodness?
SPRATT: Yes, I think we could, because we know that the amount of carbon in the air will be slowly drawn down over time. If we reafforest, if we support the biosphere we can reduce it. It's going to require a great effort. As Al Gore said this is the moment in America, and for all the first world nations, who are the largest permitters to say we have to stop altogether. We know that this is not a technological or economic question, it's a question of social and political will. The technologies are there, people are making all electric cars, renewable energy is today's technology. These are not insurmountable problems, but they do require a change in how we think about the problem and to exercise the foresight that our political system often lacks.
LAM: So, there is still some hope there which is good to hear.
SPRATT: Absolutely, I think Gore's message on the weekend should be read by people around the world, and taken as an inspiration.
