Once more, Albert Gore warned that climate change is speeding up and policymakers must step up action against the planetary emergency by making new laws.
“Climate crisis is significantly worse and unfolding more rapidly than the most pessimistic prospects predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),” said Gore in the World Economic Forum taking place in Davos, Switzerland.
Last November, the IPCC stated that global warming is unequivocal, as increasing average temperature of atmosphere and oceans and melting ice proves it.
At the same time, the experts assured that we have still time to slow it down, and that the cost of the required effort, even in the more drastic scenario, would take only 0.12% of the world’s economic production in a year.
Figures
The UN General Secretary, Ban Ki-Moon, Gore and other prominent figures attending Davos are sounding the alarm again.
According some scientists, North Pole ice layers could disappear in the summer five years from now.
Some progress was made during the recent summit at Bali, Indonesia, but there are still unsolved matters like the views held by the United States and China and the situation of many poor countries that do not have budgets to undertake environmental policies.
A report by the universities of Columbia and Yale listing countries according its environmental actions and policies was published in Davos.
Switzerland leads the list and, as a rule, poorest countries are at the bottom. But many countries could certainly have better performances, among them the United States (39), Japan (21), Spain (30) and United Kingdom (14).
Costa Rica and Colombia, with no such a high GDP, were numbered fifth and ninth on the list.
Accelerated emerging economies with high environmental costs attract the attention, among them China (105) and India (120).
Well-balanced solutions
For the time being, the most effective solution seems to be introducing a tax on greenhouse emissions worldwide.
However, not all of the countries have resources and capacity to take this and other measures.
The European Union is maybe the economical block going ahead regarding anti-greenhouse gases policies, which should be tough and well balanced at the same time.
According the EU’s programme for cutting greenhouse emissions by 20% by 2020 (compared to 1990), the effort would amount €3 a week for every European citizen and less than 0.5% of GDP.
“A real commitment, but not a bad deal. Even on the most optimistic assumptions, the cost of inaction is more than ten times that,” said the European Commission president, José Manuel Durao Barroso.
The programme aims to reach 20% of energy use from renewable sources by 2020, and biofuels will have to make up 10% of fuels used for transportation.
Enterprises taking part of the emissions trading system must cut its emanations by 21% in relation to 2005.
As part of an auction system, industrial companies would buy CO2 emissions permits, which were freely granted by governments until now.
The programme would also encourage new rules to stimulate carbon capture and long-term storage in geological formations.
Several reactions followed the European Commission president’s speech:
-Employers associations insisted that any effort to tackle emissions should not affect competitivity.
-Unions appreciated the plan, but called the attention on possible repercussions in employment and stated that social issues must be among the priorities.
-Environmental organisations considered that the programme is not enough to face the challenge.
- "It is not up to expectations," said the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri.
The programme is still to get through the European Parliament.
One of its main details is that countries will contribute in line with their capacity to invest. The higher GDP, the bigger effort.
Challenges
“We are running out of time,” said UN General Secretary in Davos.
If global warming is an increasing threat, the challenge grows bigger as it is related to old problems and cannot only be solved through tax schemes or purely environmental actions.
The effort must be integrated and coherent.
It must take into consideration factors like the insufficient development assistance, the poverty and the inequity in access to water, pandemics like Aids and mounting prices of food and energy, which are destabilizing countries and regions.
Coherence was a major subject in several speeches at Davos meeting, those from Albert Gore, Ban Ki-Moon and even the rock star Bono.
Consensus appears to be the main problem.
Economy, market, consumers
Fears of a recession in US these days are spreading instability across stock markets all over the world.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice assured at Davos that the US economy was resilient and would remain an "engine of growth”. A slight recovery in New York stock market followed her statement.
In Davos, a survey revealed some of the issues currently disturbing the economic policy-makers attending the Forum:
-The lack of leadership and coordinated response to face the current crisis in the financial markets
-A recession in US economy as the consequence of the real state and credit industries´ crisis and the drop in private consumption
-A deep credit crisis in markets all over the world
Consumption, financial, credit… Those are key words for Davos Forum attendees. They have reasons to be worried; evidences of a rapidly deteriorating economical scenario are overwhelming.
However, global warming, poverty, water shortage, Aids, escalating prices of food and fuel and the resulting political instability in many countries have an immense potential of devastation, like the magmatic caldera bellow Yellowstone pushing toward the surface to explode and bring winter to Earth.
These problems are real and present. They are not a probability.
It is long due to achieve strategies and consensus, so environmental and social imperatives can be quoted at a top level in stock markets.
From the individual view, we should ask ourselves how much we really need every time we are about to give in to the everyday compulsion to buy.
This is not only about recycling.
As for governments and corporations, they have the main responsibility.
Albert Gore said in Davos that when it comes to the climate change, it is important to be aware that personal actions are not the solution and could help only at the margins.
"In addition to changing the light bulbs, it is far more important to change the laws and to change the treaty obligations that nations have," he said.
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