November 29, 2015
What happens in Paris impacts us.
What happens in Paris impacts us.
MARTYN BRADBURY
The Climate Change conference in Paris this week impacts us in the most direct and serious ways. This has to be the conference where empty promises end and real solutions and investment into combating climate change universally undertaken.
Let's be crystal clear. The planet is warming at a dangerous speed never naturally created before. Yes our global climate has oscillated over hundreds of thousands of years, but the carbon emissions since the Industrial Revolution have super heated the planet in a way that normally takes hundreds of thousands of years to build.
The wilder, hotter and more extreme weather we are experiencing now is the feedback loops built into our biosphere kicking in and bringing on abrupt climate change.
The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is an International body that has to agree to all the wording in their climate declarations, which means they are a very conservative body. They have not taken into account much of Antarctica melting, nor the impact of frozen methane bubbling to the surface from our warming oceans or the permafrost melting in Siberia. This all means that we are seeing the worst case scenarios playing out in real time.
The weather will only get wilder and more erratic from here – not better. That will start impacting the manner in which we can rebuild from natural disasters. If you are facing force 5 Hurricane after force 5 Hurricane, no amount of resources can repair in time for the next storm.
With indigenous peoples usually the poorest in most countries, climate change is the ultimate challenge because it hurts those living in poverty the hardest while in some cases in the Pacific, swallowing their islands whole. How we are going to welcome and live with an influx of Pacific Island refugees is a debate we are not even having yet.
Limited resources on a world of poverty and privilege demands a response that is meaningful and constructive. We have simply waited and allowed too many vested interests convince us that climate change was a future problem our great grand children would need to face. The reality is that it is THE major challenge for us now.
Martyn Bradbury
Editor – TheDailyBlog.co.nz
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