Contraction & Convergence: The Global Solution to Climate Change (Schumacher Briefings, 5) - Softcover

Meyer, Aubrey

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1870098943 ISBN 13: 9781870098946

Verlag: Green Books, 2001

Inhaltsangabe

This Briefing explains the origins of the climate crisis and describes some of the dangerous trends created by global warming. The global policy framework of 'Contraction & Convergence' (C&C) described was created and introduced to the United Nations in the 1990s by the Global Commons Institute (GCI) to avert these trends. Based on the thesis of 'Equity & Survival', C&C seeks to ensure future prosperity and choice by applying the global rationale of precaution, equity and efficiency in that order. C&C has become the most widely cited and arguably the most widely supported framework proposal in the global debate on what to do about climate change.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Aubrey Meyer was born in Bradford and grew up in South Africa. He first studied music, which lead to a very successful orchestral career, including playing Viola in the London Philharmonic Orchestra in the 1980s. It was while searching for a subject for a musical that he was inspired to join the UK Green Party and then to co-found the Global Commons Institute (GCI) in London. He is a contributor to Feasta – the Dublin-based foundation for the economics of sustainability.

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Contraction & Convergence

The Global Solution to Climate Change

By Aubrey Meyer

UIT Cambridge Ltd

Copyright © 2007 Aubrey Meyer
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-870098-94-6

Contents

Acknowledgements, 
Foreword by James Bruges, 
Author's Note, 
Introduction & Summary, 
Chapter 1 How the Climate Crisis Developed, 
Chapter 2 How the Thesis of 'Equity and Survival' Came About, 
Chapter 3 The Antithesis: The Efficiency of 'No-Regrets', 
Chapter 4 The Synthesis: Contraction & Convergence, 
Chapter 5 The Rising Tide of Support for C&C, 
Chapter 6 Framework versus Guesswork, 
Chapter 7 Looking Back, Seeing Forward, 
Open Letter to World Leaders — please sign, 
References, 
Resources, 

CHAPTER 1

How the Climate Crisis Developed

The Antarctic ice tells the tale well. Samples of the air trapped in cores recovered from drill holes show that the concentration of CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere has varied between 180 and 280 parts per million by volume (ppmv) over the past half a million years. The cores can tell us about the way temperatures changed too, and an analysis of the proportions of the oxygen isotopes O18 and O16 in the trapped air shows that local temperature rose and fell in a pattern that consistently corresponds with the rise and fall of the CO2 concentration.

This does not mean that temperature simply 'followed' CO2 levels up and down. For one thing, we don't know the direction of causation — it might have been that temperature rose and CO2 followed it rather than the other way about. Equally, it might have been that some other factor or factors influenced the rise and fall of both temperature and CO2 levels: other factors were certainly involved. However, the cores show an undeniable but not necessarily exclusive link between temperature and CO2levels.

It would have been surprising had they shown anything else, because the existence of the link between the two is totally noncontroversial. It is a matter of simple physics, and even those who argue that the global warming we have experienced so far is nothing to worry about accept that if emissions go on increasing, concentrations of greenhouse gases must reach the point where they have a dangerous warming effect.

The common feature about all greenhouse gases is that they are opaque to particular frequencies of infrared light — radiant heat — and prevent it being radiated off into outer space. This helps to keep our planet warm. Indeed, without this effect, we would not be here. However, because human activities have increased the level of ghgs in the atmosphere above their natural level, they have increased the opacity of the sky to radiant heat. Solar radiation arrives as ultra-violet and visible light, frequencies not affected by the ghgs, and heat the Earth's surface. This then gives out lower-frequency infrared radiation that is blocked by the ghgs from escaping into space. Instead, it excites the ghg molecules, thus warming the atmosphere and raising global temperature above what it would otherwise be.

Increasingly rapid rates of fossil fuel burning since industrialization began 200 years ago have caused CO2 and other greenhouse gases to be pumped into the global atmosphere as 'waste' at such a high rate that the natural re-absorption and breakdown systems have been unable to cope. The normal equilibrium between the sources of the gases and the 'sinks' which absorb them or break them down has broken down As a result, CO2 levels are now 30% higher than any time registered in the ice-core records and are rising fast. Indeed, the surprising and frightening thing about atmospheric pollution is how recently and rapidly it has come about. There is nothing equivalent in the ice-core record. As late as 1960 we had added only 20 per cent to the pre-industrial level of CO2, but we will be 100 per cent above it as early as 2030 if fossil fuel consumption continues to grow at its present rate. The published literature includes projections up to 200% and even 300% above preindustrial atmospheric CO2 concentration, with temperature trends rising inexorably in consequence (see chart below).

Most scientists and informed observers now regard the links between these rising emissions, concentrations and temperature as being completely beyond dispute and accept that the mean temperature of the planet is rising largely as a result of higher greenhouse gas concentrations. As James Hansen of NASA says, 'There should no longer be an issue about whether global warming is occurring, but what is the rate of warming, what is its practical significance, and what should be done about it.'

These questions are difficult to answer because we don't know exactly what effect this extra heat will have. What we can say, however, is that some of the effects, like a continuing rise in global temperatures, are now unavoidable. Although the extent and pace of this rise are uncertain, many climate scientists put the risks it poses as somewhere between dangerous and catastrophically dangerous. One of their fears is that, rather than changes being gradual, there will be a sudden flip to a new and quite different climate regime. In this, the worst-case scenario, the survival of all but a tiny minority of the human race comes into question.

I am not being alarmist. With the greenhouse effect, every successive study seems to produce more worrying projections than its predecessor because many of them discover powerful positive feedback mechanisms that will accelerate warming rather than slow it. One such positive feedback mechanism was disclosed in November 1998 when the British Government's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research issued a set of projections that showed that if nothing was done to restrict fossil fuel consumption, the rate at which the world warmed would accelerate because some positive feedbacks kicked in. Average world land temperatures, which have risen by almost 2°C since 1900, would soar by a further 3°C over the next fifty years, the report said. This would be by far the most significant change in the global climate since the end of the last ice age. This refers to temperatures on the land, which warms up more quickly than the sea. The Earth's surface temperature, which obviously includes both land and sea, has risen by just under 1°C.

The report added that this warming would not be uniform. Increases around the poles would be much greater than at the Equator, with northern Russia, northern Canada and Greenland acquiring average temperatures some 6-8°C above their current level. Other workers have come up with similar results. The temperatures in the area from which the ice core samples were taken in Antarctica would rise by 15°C according to the Global Dynamics Institute in Rome, which based its projection on the data the cores themselves provide.

Naturally, a lot of snow and ice would melt if this happened, and the resulting water, coupled with the thermal expansion of the warming seas, would cause sea levels to rise by 21cm. Unless massive defences were built, this rise would put some 78 million people at risk of annual flooding, compared with 10 million in 1990. Indeed, this figure is almost certainly a gross underestimate because the model that produced it does not allow any increase in the number or ferocity of storms, not to mention catastrophic rates of on-land ice-decay in Antarctica, Greenland and elsewhere.

Although the warming would allow trees in the northern hemisphere to grow closer to...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Green Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2001
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1870098943
• ISBN 13: 9781870098946
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 1
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
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