This has been a week of climate pessimism. First, The Guardian on Wednesday, 9 Nov 2011 quoted the International Energy Association (IEA)’s warning that the world is headed for irreversible climate change in 5 years. Prof. Surya Sethi (formerly in the PM's Energy Co-ordination Committee) gave a lecture in Singapore yesterday on how far behind the world is on climate negotiations.
Is this alarmist information, or a call for drastic action? What do you think?
http://www.ecowalkthetalk.com/blog/2011/11/11/climate-change-negotiations-some-inconvenient-truths/
Comments
That was a very enlightening article..apart from laying emphasis on the urgency which an issue as important as climate change deserves,it has also shed light on the drawbacks of the emission trading market,isnt this akin to NIMBY?only difference being that the annexe 1 countries can pay the annexe II countries in monetary terms and get away with dumping the wastes(emissions) in their territory?
It is ultimate warning but greed has its own preference and world suffers
It's not the first warning, the sirens have been ringing loud ever since Jim Hansen and Bill McKibben. It is a matter of reclaiming the environmental dialogue from its currently hijacked state. Corporate sustainability, in essence, means "Fiscal Sustainability+" their profits are always the baseline, and if the world gets a little better, who won't mind raising prices to compensate.. We need an earnest, discerning look at the entire sustainability scene - is it just another aspect of profit-making, or is it quintessentially planet-centered? Therein lies the means to question both drastic 'action', and drastic inaction on the issue of climate change.
Every crisis can be treated as an opportunity. This might just be the kind of momentum we need to get the world to act with full seriousness. Of course the challenges are akin to Mount Everest, but even Mount Everest was eventually scaled by mankind.