The survival number

By: Rina Saeed Khan on October 29th, 2009

Scientists tell us that climate change will cause severe droughts and intense flooding; more frequent storms and rising sea levels. As recent events in Kenya, India, the Philippines and Bangladesh have demonstrated, this is already happening.

Climate change is today’s reality and millions are learning to cope. There is now a global sense of urgency underscored by science.

This past weekend marked a global day of action on climate change — activists organised more than 3,000 climate actions across the world from the bottom of the Great Barrier Reef to the summit of Mount Everest. Unfortunately, the few events earmarked for Pakistan (which included a walk and functions at several schools in Islamabad) had to be cancelled due to the prevailing security situation in the country.

Climate change concerns take a back seat during times of war. But while the army action in Waziristan will come to an end sooner or later, I’m afraid climate change is not something that will go away, at least in our lifetime.

The recent climate change rallies and events centred on the number 350, to draw attention to 350 parts per million (ppm), which many scientists now say is the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide (and other green house gases) in the atmosphere. This weekend, in major cities of the world, tens of thousands of people formed giant 3s or 5s or 0s, in what was called a “planet-scale game of Scrabble.”

Currently, we are at the 385 ppm figure — which is enough to keep the atmosphere warm for some time to come. For hundreds of thousands of years, the atmosphere was fairly stable at around 270-280 ppm. Then, 200 years ago the industrial revolution began in the West and with the proliferation of smoke-emitting factories and coal-burning engines we shot up from 280 ppm to 385 ppm, which is why the Arctic is now melting. Even if we stopped using fossil fuels immediately, there is enough carbon dioxide and other green house gases stored in our oceans which would continue to come out over the decades!

Given the present rates of carbon emissions, we are going up by one to 1.5 ppm each year as countries like China and India rapidly industrial

ise. Scientists say we will reach the 450 ppm figure by the middle of the century. With the world still dependent on fossil fuels for energy and with deforestation continuing at its current rate (cutting forests releases large amounts of carbon dioxide), we are heading towards a world that will be drastically different from the one we know today.

According to Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “every single estimate that people have come up with has been exceeded by reality…. The impacts of climate change are clearly turning out to be much worse than what we had anticipated earlier”.

The solution, of course, is to cut down on the energy we use (from fossil fuels) as soon as we can, and turn to renewable energy like wind and solar, but it is easier said than done. In fact, energy experts point out that the amount of energy we use in the world is projected to grow by 50 per cent by 2030!

European politicians have argued for limiting emissions to 450 ppm in order to try to keep global average temperature rise to 2C, saying any further increase would mean that we will have no chance of limiting climate change to acceptable levels. Right now, 450 ppm is more palatable to political leaders in the West.

So where did the 350 ppm figure come from? It originated from a Nasa research team which surveyed both real-time climate observations and emerging climatic data in January of 2008. Their peer-reviewed article concluded that above 350 ppm of carbon dioxide, the earth’s atmosphere couldn’t support “a planet similar to the one on which civilisation developed and to which life on earth is adapted”.

Naturally, limiting carbon dioxide levels to 350 ppm would mean even more stringent emissions cuts. Currently, global leaders are more or less agreed upon cutting global emissions by 30 per cent in 2030 and 80 per cent by 2050 (although they are still vague about short-term targets). Although the EU says it will do this, and President Obama says he wants to do it, the leaders of China and India are still unclear.

Right now, there is a good chance to prevent things from going out of control if global leaders can commit to a strong and binding climate treaty in Copenhagen in December.

Some climate change activists say that to get back to safe levels, we need a very rapid halt to the use of coal, gas and oil. The powerful oil and gas lobby (and Opec countries led by Saudi Arabia) are quite upset by all this campaigning — hence their frenzied behind-the-scene efforts to sabotage a global treaty by the end of the year. Politicians in the US and the European Union are under intense pressure not to acquiesce to binding emission cuts.

Many developing countries, especially those with large coastal areas and the low-lying island-states, have now committed in principle to setting 350 ppm as a worldwide goal. The number, activists say, has become a kind of shorthand for a fair and binding climate treaty. “People in almost all the nations of the earth are involved,” stated 350 spokesman Archbishop Desmond Tutu. “It’s the same kind of coalition that helped make the word ‘apartheid’ known around the world.” Perhaps if enough people around the world put enough pressure on their political leaders, an ambitious deal to limit global warming in Copenhagen could be possible.
(first published as an op-ed in the daily DAWN)