Scientists, politicians and economists recently gathered in New Zealand for the Greenhouse 94 conference from October 10 to 14. Discussions at the conference confirmed that the heat is on: sea levels are rising, climate patterns are shifting, and the atmosphere is heating up. ZANNY BEGG reports on the implications of global warming.
Ben Elton, in his best-selling novel Stark, was able to describe the earth as a stinking trash can of multinational companies — with an ozone layer in tatters, sea temperatures rising and pollution transforming the air into a toxic soup — and keep it funny. But when straight-faced scientists begin to talk about the threat global warming poses to the planet there isn't much to laugh about.
Two thousand five hundred scientists working for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a statement on September 14 that told the world what we didn't want to know: carbon dioxide levels are on the rise and the world's climate is at a serious risk from human activity. This was confirmed by discussions at the Greenhouse 94 conference, convened by CSIRO, which concluded that sea levels and temperatures in the Oceania region have been rising steadily since the beginning of the century.
Elwin Jackson attended the Greenhouse 94 conference for Greenpeace. His prediction for the future, if no reduction of greenhouse gases occurs, is as stark as Ben Elton's. "In the year 2040", he explained to Green Left Weekly, "we could see famine stalking through South-East Asia. We could see more droughts, increased flooding, rapidly changing weather conditions and more pests. The conditions we see in many parts of Africa could come to this part of the world. The human cost of this would be horrific.
"In ecological terms we could see entire life forms like coral die out if the sea temperatures rise by just a few degrees. These are just some snapshots of the crisis we are facing."
A report published in August by the Washington-based Climate Institute estimated that global warming over the next 80 years could lead to the destruction of fisheries, increase storm damage and displace millions of people.
The report noted that 5700 square kilometres of India's coastal regions are at risk of inundation, which would leave 7.1 million people homeless. In Vietnam 10% of the population could be displaced by rising sea levels. A sea level rise of one metre could deplete Malaysia's mangrove cover and severely erode its coast. 3.3 million people living in Indonesia's coastal regions could be displaced by sea level rises and billions of dollars' worth of damage could be inflicted on houses, ports, offices, roads and railways. A one metre rise would threaten 21% of the agricultural land and 14% of the population in Bangladesh.
These unnerving figures are brought home to Australia by some of the research carried out by Dingle Smith, a senior fellow at the Australian National University Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies who attended Greenhouse 94 to give a paper on flooding.
Smith closely studied the Hawkesbury Nepean and Queanbeyan areas of NSW to assess damage caused by flooding under an enhanced greenhouse effect. He worked from a scenario from the CSIRO which looked at rainfall patterns when CO2 in the atmosphere doubles (called the 2 x CO2 time scale).
"When we had CSIRO produce for the first time estimates of what greenhouse change would mean for rainfall intensities, we learned that intense rainfall bursts would increase fairly dramatically in the time scale of 2 x CO2, which is roughly over the next 50 years. These changes in rainfall would be matched by increases in the flood intensity", Smith explained.
"The worst case scenario during the 2 x CO2 time scale would mean that flood intensity would go up by a factor of about four. Because we have a large database on all the houses in the Hawkesbury Nepean and Queanbeyan regions, we were able to assess the implications of the new scenario.
"The base line for assessing flooding in the Hawkesbury Nepean region is the one in 100 years flood, a rare flood. If a one in 100 years flood happened tomorrow, around 1700 residences would have water over the floor. In the 2 x CO2 time scale, this would rise to close to 8500. Because of the overall geography of the region we estimate that a one in 100 years flood tomorrow would destroy completely around 70 houses. In the 2 x CO2 time scale, that figures climbs to 2500", Smith continued.
Smith points out the social implications of flooding: "If the building actually fails, the stress to the occupants can be very severe. In Ipswich in Queensland during the 1974 floods, people lost their entire houses. The owners were left in the terrible position where they were paying a mortgage on a house that had been swept away, they had nowhere to live and the only tangible thing they owned was a flood-prone block. The worse flooding gets, the worse the social effects are."
Smith's findings, combined with the Climate Institutes report and the warnings coming from the IPCC, present a pretty disturbing picture. The amount of information on global warming, like the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, is increasing rapidly. And all of it is bad news.
The basic science behind global warming has been pretty clearly established. Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases like methane and nitrous oxide in the earth's atmosphere have a natural greenhouse effect; radiation from the sun passes through the atmosphere and warms the earth's surface. Much of the heat is radiated back into space, but greenhouse gases trap some of it.
Without the natural greenhouse effect, the earth would be too cold for human life. Since the start of the industrial revolution, however, human society has burned around 60 thousand million tonnes of carbon-based fuel, greatly increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This creates what has been called the "enhanced greenhouse effect", which accelerates the heating of the earth.
In scientific circles there is very broad agreement that the earth's atmosphere is warming up. Study after study has confirmed this fact.
For example, Dr Neville Nicholls, leader of the climate research group for the Bureau of Meteorology in Melbourne, has been involved in a study of observed climate change in the south-west Pacific. His studies show that there has been a definite warming throughout the region.
"Ours was the first study", he explained, "to look at all the elements. We looked at precipitation, cloudiness, sea surface temperature and even the temperature below the ocean surface to see whether there is a consistent pattern of change.
"We had to be so thorough because all of the data is somehow suspect on its own. We hoped that by looking at all the different types of data together we could see whether they would confirm each other. And that is just what we found. This century, particularly since 1951, there is clear evidence of a 0.4 C to 0.8 C warming throughout the south-west Pacific."
While a 0.4 C increase in temperature may not sound great, it is only a 0.5 C increase in the ocean temperature which has been linked to the current drought in Australia.
What there is not broad agreement on in scientific circles, however, is whether the present warming is the start of the enhanced greenhouse effect.
Nicholls is cautious on this score. "We can't tell for sure whether the warming of the south-west Pacific is just a fluke or whether it is due to human activities. We can say for sure that the changes we are seeing are not inconsistent with the patterns of change you would expect from the enhanced greenhouse effect."
Smith looks at the question in another way. "Very slight changes in the temperature of oceans can have enormous effects on the distribution of fish. The same kind of distribution effects apply to forests and agricultural crops.
"What you also have to consider is that we are already changing the environment through a multitude of other effects. Global fisheries are already overwhelmed by ocean pollution, over-fishing and so on. Coral is already dying because of other causes. How will we be able to measure the effects of global warming in an environment seriously degraded? Sometimes you get the feeling we are arguing about finer scientific points while the crisis goes on around us."
Greens (WA) Senator Dee Margetts believes that there has never been so much scientific agreement in modern times as there has been on climate change. "Climate change is not the sort of thing you can put in a test tube and say we have done this experiment 50 or 100 times and this is the outcome. What we can say quite clearly is that the greenhouse scenarios that have been put forward are consistent with what is happening now."
Rather then fiddling with finer scientific points while the planet burns, many scientists, environmentalists and social justice activists are arguing for change now. Peter Kinrade, Australian Conservation Foundation member on the National Greenhouse Advisory Panel, believes, "Governments have used scientific uncertainty to try to get let off the hook".
The magnitude of the problem means that waiting for absolute scientific certainty may well jeopardise society's potential for action, as Margetts argues: "By the time global warming becomes so bloody obvious that governments have to take action, it might just be too late".
Action from governments on greenhouse emissions has been very slow. The IPCC has released a report which says that even the most ambitious targets on the negotiating table for reducing greenhouse gases will not prevent global warming.
In Berlin in March, the next major international meeting on global warming will be held, but environmentalists are not very optimistic that strong action will be taken on emission levels. Currently no agreements on greenhouse gases are binding. Most of the targets allow concentrations in the atmosphere to increase.
If Japan, the United States and the European Union achieve their target of stabilising CO2 emissions at 1990 levels by the year 2000, greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere will still go up for at least a century. If the British government meets its target of CO2 reductions by the year 2000, it has said it expects to increase emissions after that date. Australian environment minister Senator John Faulkner opened the Greenhouse 94 conference by saying Australia would not reach its greenhouse gas reduction target by the year 2000.
Australia is one of the five worst greenhouse gas emitters in the world. In 1990 alone Australia produced 572 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. A greenhouse inventory of Australia revealed that forest destruction was contributed 25% of 1990 greenhouse gas emissions and that the energy sector 53%. Despite these figures, forest clearing continues, no strict controls have been placed on industry, and renewable energy options are largely ignored.
Dingle Smith describes the inability of governments to act on global warming: "I don't think the industrialised world, or the Third World for that matter, can really get a grip on cutting down the emissions in the way that needs to happen. And of course the longer they put it off, the more greenhouse gases that are emitted, and the harder it becomes. I think it is just too difficult for governments to respond.
"Is the First World, which is already industrialised, going to turn to the Third World and say, 'You can't do that, you are going to be penalised'? Will the Australian coal industry hurt its profits and reduce emissions if it can't be guaranteed action on a world scale? Senator Faulkner at the opening of the conference basically said that action in Australia is impossible. I think this is true of almost anywhere you can name in the world.
"There is a lot of discussion about 'no regret' solutions, which are options that don't cost anybody anything. Now there are limits to the free lunch. There isn't much slack in the system, and I have a terrible suspicion that it will take too long for governments to act. Then of course we will have to deal with the impacts of a warmer world."
A problem the size of global warming obviously deserves an equally massive response. But where will this response come from? At the Greenhouse 94 conference, pollution emission quotas and carbon taxes were put forward as a solution. Dr Brian Fisher, from the Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics, argued for tradeable pollution quotas to encourage industry to reduce pollution. Some environmental groups have called for a "green tax" to factor the cost of environmental destruction into industry.
But pollution quotas do not reduce overall pollution; they just parcel it out between different industries which have bought the "right" to pollute. The only way quotas can reduce overall pollution is if the government, or some other institution, actively buys up the quotas and does not use them — not a likely scenario in a competitive world.
A carbon tax is intended as a disincentive for companies to pollute, but like most taxes would end up being paid by ordinary people who have no real control or choice about what fuels are used. Moreover, a study at the Australian National University estimated that a carbon tax would cause a 2% drop in GDP. Would the government stand aside and let the economy wear such a loss?
Dee Margetts feels that the market alone cannot stop pollution. "By themselves, industry won't go green. The market signals, even with carbon taxes, are not enough unless you build in some regulation, some standards that demand energy efficiency. State or federal intervention is required to implement higher standards."
This view is supported by Peter Kinrade, who feels that "the market itself is not going to be an appropriate mechanism to solve global warming".
The market is driven by profit. There are obviously very few companies that will voluntarily limit their profits by reducing carbon emissions and greening their technology. That puts the ball in the government's court to introduce legislation that will force industry to change. "The fact that damage to our environment gets counted as a plus to our GDP is a fault with the system", says Margetts. "We have a very skewed idea of value in our society, and we need to change that."
Karen Fletcher, the Democratic Socialist Party candidate for the seat of Marrickville in the NSW elections next March, agrees with Margetts on this point. "In our society, the most valuable thing is private profit. This is considered more valuable than even the future of the planet itself. Industry will continue to avoid paying the price for a degraded environment. We have to turn this around. We have to say that people and the environment come first."
Fletcher believes that global warming can be solved only "when people have a democratic say in how the economy is run. The free market is a prison. It puts control over the environment behind the bars of profit. At the moment only those with a fat cheque book can make decisions.
"We will stop global warming only when we have an integrated approach to it. We need to stop industry polluting, but we also need to increase public transport, we need to build energy efficient houses, we need to plant more trees. We will achieve these changes only if people get involved on a massive scale and fight for them. The system as it is can provide no solution."
In a final scene in the novel Stark, a capitalist, with a belated conscience, explains the end of the world:"Ever since the industrial revolution when James Watt boiled a kettle and invented acid rain, the natural life-forming parameters of our world have been like an hour glass, getting thinner and thinner. The question being would we squeeze past the middle and break through to the other side. Now if we had acted earlier, when it first got obvious that we were screwing up home sweet home then it might have been OK ... but we didn't do it. We opted for constant profit and comfort, beer and skittles at the expense of the whole of future history. Anyway now the gap in the glass is plugged ... there isn't a way through any more."
In real life Elwin Jackson from Greenpeace presents us with a similar choice. "It is already too late to act on global warming in many ways. What we have to do now is make sure that warming does not get to the point where we can't do anything about it. We have opportunities now, we have the warnings of the world's best scientists saying what the implications of global warming will be. What we have to do now is to look at the potential for changes open to us and run with them. We have to act now to avoid the horror scenarios of the future."