Can you Hear?
12Feb08
Thank you to all of you emailing / facebook-ing me to resume blogging! I’ve been offline and distracted - most recently in South Africa for an innovation workshop on sustainable tourism. On the one hand I was picking up lots of great stories to share here, on the other hand I guess I lost the discipline needed to write stuff down! Let’s see if I can get it back. In the meantime, here is a little Blue Man production alerting us that Planet Earth has no emergency exits!
Good to see the blog up and running again. As much as the hypocrisy in USA insistence not to follow the Kyoto protocal is laughable and typically American, I’m going to play devil’s advocate a little bit here.
Global warming is (in the average Ali’s terms) the increase in the Earth’s near surface air temperature. Now how much of what is going on now simply a result of the world’s natural weather cycle? Over time the world has experienced a number of ice ages and naturally weather cycles have existed with peaks and troughs - and these peaks and troughs in temperature would occur regardless of external (man/woman) influences on the Earth.
So of course we as people may be accelerating cycles or “global warming”, but how much of this is just part of a natural cycle…..
Good point, but…
1. There is plenty of evidence that the changes we’re seeing are caused by human activity, and are far over and above anything that the natural cycle could be at this point in the Earth’s life. It’s not yet time for another natural Ice Age!
2. In case you think that it might not happen, or might not be that bad… this is about risk management! If it does happen, the costs are huge, including floods, epidemics, famine, refugees, resource wars, economic collapse. Do you buy car insurance?
3. The sooner we act, the easier and cheaper it will be to change the course of the climate. The longer we don’t act, the closer we get to a tipping point after which things may escalate rapidly and be much harder to remedy.
If you have 10min watch this video called ‘How It All Ends’ which is getting lots of YouTube attention right now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF_anaVcCXg
Will take a look at the youtube clip a bit later. I do agree in that the global warming issue is a real issue, however I have a few concerns with the current approach being taken around the world. There doesn’t seem to be much clarity as to what is happening - i.e. how bad is the situation getting, at what rate and what is the cause. I remember 10 years ago all the publicity was about the ozone layer and its relationship with global warming - a relationship which is now considered a lot weaker.
The other issue for me is the conflicting thoughts and viewpoints on how to improve/rectify the situation. Is it really a risk management issue?? If it was then for example we would be accepting certain countries are more likely to flood and so resource will be directed to prepare these countries for the inevitable. If its a protection issue then resource should then be directed to ensuring the “inevitable” doesn’t happen and floods or the other effects you discuss above do not occur.
The biggest problem in my opinion is the effects of global warming will primarily be experienced by future generations. With the motive of most governments these days seemingly being to get re-elected and win votes by attacking other countries - they haven’t got the incentives to invest properly into something which future generations will mostly benefit from.
Hi Menka,
Glad you’re writing again.
Appropriately, today’s Urban Dictionary Word of the Day is “WSD”.
It’s about Writing Stuff Down.
See their definition at http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=WSD
Much warmth,
Sol