Climate Change
Introduction
The issue of climate change presents the people of earth with a truly marvellous opportunity. While it is the single most dangerous prospect facing us it also provides us with the prospect of acting as one. The people of this planet are rarely truly united on any issue, nor are we it seems on the issue of climate change. Should we fail to find a political solution on this, future generations will not look back kindly. While levels of development separate us the ‘Tragedy of the commons’ can unite us. There is no credible scientific dispute over the fact that certain gases exert a so-called greenhouse effect on the earth's surface and lower atmosphere. These gases which are referred to as G.H.G. do not have much, if any, influence on the incoming, short-wave, radiation as it passes through the earth's atmosphere. It is when this radiation is reflected back away from the earth that it is trapped by these G.H.G and reradiated acting like a blanket keeping heat close to the earth's surface and as a result leading to an increase in planet temperatures.
“We all know that the world faces a threat potentially more catastrophic than any other threat in human history: climate change and global warming” - Tolba 1991.
The greatest element to this threat is the irreversibility of change once the forces are set in motion. The industrial revolution is barely 200 years old yet in that time we have altered a system millions of years old. Our over-reliance on combustion technologies, an inability to control the systems we have created, an unwillingness to implement environmentally benign policies, a deep-seated resistance to forgo current wealth for future safety and the shameful inertia at a political level all are contributors to the problem. Vested interests and their impact on the democratic process also cannot be discounted. Governments may be elected by the people but they often behave in a way which is anything but beneficial to the people.
The Path to Politics
The issue of climate change is a relatively recent addition to world politics and is arguably one of the most important today. Scientists attending an international conference in Villach Austria in 1985 reached a consensus about the seriousness of the problem of enhanced G.H.G and suggested it was that it was time for the policy-makers to get involved. The conference also recommended that an advisory group be set-up to provide regularly updated evaluations of the issue to the heads of ; World Meteorological Organisation, United Nations Environment Program and the International Council of Scientific Unions. This group calling itself the Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gases (AGGG), met for the first time in July 1986. At this same time the United States was experiencing one of the worst droughts on record, which was seriously affecting agricultural output. The New York Times reported on June 17 1988 that stored grain was at the lowest level for 5 years and would only last for 77 days. A congressional hearing into the matter was chaired by Senator Timothy Wirth. On June 23rd 1988, a day which was the hottest of the year in Washington D.C. the congressional meeting listened to a statement from James Hansen, then chief climate officer with NASA. The day turned out to be the hottest on record and Hansen declared that the ‘greenhouse effect is here’. Hansen directly linked the drought and warm weather to global warming(Science of Global Warming- Francis Drake). The congressional hearing was well attended by the media and so coverage was high. At the same time a scientific conference on the subject was being held in Toronto. Hansen’s statement was endorsed by the conference and concluded that the time had come to act. It called for developed countries to reduce their G.H.G emissions by 20 % from 1988 levels by the year 2005. Global warming was now firmly on the political agenda. The Toronto conference paved the way for political acceptance of the issue and led to the establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in December 1988 by the UN. The raison d'être for this body was to ensure that climate change was dealt with by governments and not just a group of interested scientists. Shortly after the Second World Conference on Climate Change, held on November 1st 1990, the UN General Assembly called for the establishment of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) for a Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC). The INC/FCCC met for the first time in February 1991. The aim was to negotiate a convention for signature at the UN conference on environment and development in Rio in June 1992. The EU and small island states, who will be first to face extinction, favoured the establishment of a target and timetable for limiting emissions, while the US and OPEC countries opposed these moves. The convention’s main aim was to “Stabilise concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at levels which would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference in the climate system”. The convention also encouraged industrialised countries to stabilise their emissions at 1990 levels by 2000, although this was not legally binding. The summit also adopted, under the declaration of the Global Forum on Environment and Poverty, the notion that the global commons belong to all human beings equally.
