|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Climate Change Hurts 'Have Nots' |
| Rich nations' search for wealth disproportionately impacts the poor |
|
Ranjit Goswami (ranjit)  |
 Email Article
 Print Article
|
|
|
|
Published 2006-11-01 12:26 (KST) |
|
|
|
Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, stated more than 2,300 years ago about common goods: "That's which is common to the greatest number has the least attention bestowed upon it. Everyone thinks chiefly of his own, hardly ever of the public interest."
In the 21st century, the height of human civilization, when each individual is exploring how to generate more wealth for himself, when each country is looking for opportunities to grow fast with higher degree of industrialization and consumption, we seldom see any consolidated roadmap across global forums to tackle what can potentially be the largest dampener of the global economy: climate change.
 |
TODAY'S TOP STORIES |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
FROM THE SECTION |
|
|
|
|
| This is solely because no individual or country owns Mother Nature. It's common to all of us.
In present day capitalism, we own assets and wealth and are primarily concerned with how to own more of them. And as human civilization exponentially grew since the industrial revolution, that rate of exploitation of natural resources -- from fuels to ores to air to water -- have also grown exponentially.
It's hard to imagine any forms of asset and wealth being generated anywhere without direct or indirect natural inputs. As quantum of individual human wealth has jumped over the years, Mother Nature was robbed of more of her natural resources.
That's one side of the picture. At the same time, increased inequality of distribution of that wealth saw a large part of present day population (1.2 billion people, almost 20 percent of global population) still living below the poverty line. Nearly 3 billion people even today -- that's almost half of the global population -- live on less than US$2 a day. And a majority of these people, living close to nature, earn their sustenance not from modern day advanced human civilization, but from age-old manual activities like farming and fishing.
A recent report released by Sir Nicholas Stern, the World Bank's former chief economist, highlights many of the potential dangers from the global warming, arguing that it could cost the world economy up to a fourth of its output.
The U.S. has still not ratified the Kyoto protocol, which assigns mandatory targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to signatory nations. The U.S. contributes around 25 percent of the global GHG release, but has only 4 percent of the global population. Many of the other developed countries that signed Kyoto protocol, with the pledge to bring down their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to below their 1990 levels, have rather increased their contributions to global warming.
Greenhouse gases (GHGs) are those chemical compounds that act to trap heat within the atmosphere and on the planet's surface. Though there are many such gases produced both naturally and through human activities, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) calls out six gases for special treatment under its international treaty.
Carbon dioxide is considered to be the worst amongst these six culprits. Research indicates that human-related carbon dioxide emission in 1750, before the industrial revolution began, was around 3 million metric tons of carbon. In 2000, the same figure reached 6,611 million tons of carbon -- an increase of more than 2000 times. The human population too increased by a factor of eight from an estimated 791 million in 1750.
And income disparity has also been on the rise since the industrial revolution reaching a phenomenal level lately. In the U.S., 10 percent of the population control almost 90 percent of the wealth, and it's no different in socialist China or in democratic emerging India. A recent study in India stated that its 391 billionaires own nearly $150 billion dollar.
And no prize for guessing who get most affected by global warming and its consequent climate change. The Stern report also highlighted the plight of developing nations. It's the poor farmer who irrigates his land with rainwater, it's the poor fisherman who lives on the edge of the rising sea, and those "have nots" all over the world who probably never consumed much of the fossil fuel that caused and still continues to drive this catastrophic global warming who are the first to face the heat..
There have been various reports on how global warming advances in a self-replicating manner, once started due to higher presence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Evidence has started pouring in from all corners of the world ? from ice-caps melting in the polar regions; to the Alps losing much of its snow-covered peaks; to rising water levels in the world's largest delta, the Sunderban in Bangladesh and India, which may potentially engulf the whole delta at a future date; to shortage of rainfall and abrupt climate change over Amazon rainforests; as nature continues to respond in its own way to regain its delicate balance.
And as the ice-caps vanish, more heat eventually gets absorbed by the water released by melting ice, which in turn causes even more ice to vanish. Water, like the GHGs, has a better heat absorption capacity compared to ice. Ongoing and present widespread exploitation increasingly looks to unsustainable to Mother Nature.
There is no denying that the potential fallout will eventually affect all living beings on this world. However evidence so far shows that people from developing nations are more affected due to the wide fallouts of nature. People whose livelihood still depends directly on nature don't know whom to curse for nature's vagaries. If continued unabated, many of these "have nots" having their dependence on nature will move into the status of refugees in search of greener pastures to sustain their survival.
We, indeed, are victims of our own ambitions, and the latest round of squabbling over the rights on who can rape and exploit Mother Nature the most unsustainably and the fastest continue as the crisis only grows large. An ancient Indian proverb says we don't inherit this world from our parents. We rather borrow it from our kids. And our generation will be judged by what we leave behind for our future generations.
What we effectively borrowed from our kids' for generations to come, and from the 'have nots' of present generation, are the assets of this beautiful world. We borrowed them with a mindset of not paying back that debt, following the model successfully showcased by most of our indebted governments.
The indebtedness of many of these governments has reached the level of unsustainability; however with fiat currency it's still given a touch of sustainability. However one can't borrow from Mother Nature indefinitely at an unsustainable pace. We can't have tomorrow's fruit today. With the wave of consumerism and easy credit all over, we splurge ourselves in a consumption party.
Only the "have nots" of the present world could not join this party. And someone, somewhere, sometime will have to pay the debt, with due interest, back to Mother Nature.
|
|
©2006 OhmyNews
|
|
|
|
Ranjit Goswami is a research scholar with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur, India; and is the author of the book "Wondering Man, Money & Go(l)d'". |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Comments Note: Kindly refrain from personal attacks and profanity. |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
How worried are you about the H1N1 influenza virus? |
|
 |
| * Vote to see the result. |
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
RSS
Del.icio.us
Digg 
reddit
Y! MyWeb
.jpg)
