четверг, 11 ноября 2010 г.

Climate change - Lots of talk, very little action

Many people have already accepted the fact that climate change is the biggest environmental threat of all time but still world leaders fail to agree upon the new climate deal that would oblige countries to reduce carbon emissions. The worst possible future climate change scenario includes frequent droughts, floods, extreme weather events, major sea level rise, and hunger across the globe.

If we want to avoid such catastrophic scenario world needs to significantly reduce CO2 emissions on global level. The best thing to do so would be to burn less fossil fuels, since fossil fuels like coal and oil contribute most to the excessive levels of harmful CO2 emissions. This is easy to say but very difficult to do because world still heavily relies on fossil fuels as fossil fuels are dominant energy sources.

Many will say that the solution to reduce the dependence on fossil fuels is renewable energy but renewable energy sources like wind and solar energy have only started developing, and they will need at least couple of decades before being able to compete with fossil fuels. We must not also forget the fact that fossil fuel lobbies are extremely powerful, and they are anything but reluctant to use their political influence to get major political decisions going their way.

Going green for politics is still more connected with the color of the money then helping our environment, and for many world's leaders ecology still has a very low value.

When it comes to doing something for ecology and environment what have we seen in the last twenty years or so? Lots of talk, lots of promises, and very little if any real efforts to actually protect our environment from climate change.

Just look at the big Copenhagen failure, it is more than enough to show you what politics is all about, namely the game of different interests. Climate deal should be one of the biggest global decisions in human history but current global political climate is anything but suitable for big global decisions.

This is because each country looks at its very own political and economic interests, and this is not the surroundings needed for global agreement.

World still hasn't acknowledged how serious climate change issue is. Do world leaders really need some disaster of major proportions to start believing?

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