With the hugely-anticipated United Nations Conference on Climate Change to be held in Copenhagen in December this year – a conference that has become the subject of hopes and fears of literally millions – hot talk around global warming is increasingly bubbling up (to mix a metaphor or three).
This past Sunday, five big eco articles appeared in the SA papers – three in the Sunday Independent alone. When the media move in concert on an issue it’s always a sight to behold. BOOK SA certainly noticed, and, in case you missed it, we present the stories here. Go on, get inside the greenhouse and get to know the issues:
Here is the good news on the climate front: the Europeans have ratcheted down their emissions targets, the Chinese are getting serious about solar power and energy efficiency, and Washington is lumbering towards a carbon cap.
These are steps towards the long-held goal: cutting global warming pollution 80 percent by 2050. Such cuts would stabilise the thickness of the heat-trapping carbon dioxide blanket surrounding the planet at 450 parts per million (ppm) and, we’ve been told, ensure that the global average temperature increase would not exceed 2186C from 1990 levels.
At last, the wreck of the rainforests is being tackled. One of the key parts of the Copenhagen climate agreement which the international community will try to construct in December is a comprehensive treaty aiming to reduce deforestation rates in the developing countries by at least 50 percent by 2020.
Not before time. It has been 20 years since we woke up to the reality of large-scale rainforest loss: in the late 1980s, the terrible scale of destruction in regions such as the Brazilian Amazon, and later, in Indonesia and other areas, dawned on the world, but in the time since then, all we have been able to do, in effect, has been to wring our hands.
We’re going to drown in information about climate change in the prelude and aftermath of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December.
In SA, most of the information we’ll likely receive will state as incontrovertible fact that our planet’s temperatures are on the rise and humans are responsible for this. Climate change scepticism doesn’t get much press here.
In what would be the largest habitat zone established in the US to protect a species from extinction, the federal government has proposed designating 519 398 square kilometres on the coast of Alaska as critical habitat for polar bears.
Officials said the designation is not likely to further slow the pace of oil and gas development, and it crucially would not impose any controls to slow the biggest threat to polar bears, the melting of sea ice as a result of climate change.
Illness will affect productivity and employment, which could slash the GDP.
Our country is reliant on our natural resources and wildlife to attract tourists, so loss of habitats and biodiversity will negatively affect the economy.
A study by the University of Cape Town, in collaboration with the Joint Centre for Political and Economic Studies and USAid, estimates that climate change will put about 3% of our GDP at risk.
Book details
- Wild Law by Cormac Cullinan
Book homepage
EAN: 9780958441780
Find this book with BOOK Finder!
- Going Green: 365 Ways to Change Our World by Simon Gear
Book homepage
EAN: 9780143025931
Find this book with BOOK Finder!
Image courtesy Copenhagen Climate Agreement Blog
