Global Challenges Facing Humanity
1. Sustainable Development and Climate Change: How can sustainable development be achieved for all while addressing global climate change?
Climate change threatens the well-being of all humans, especially the poor, who have contributed the least to global warming. They are the most vulnerable to climate change’s impacts because they depend on agriculture and fisheries, and they lack financial and technological resources to cope. By 2015 climate change is expected to reduce wheat yields by 30% and rice yields by 15% and to increase their prices by 194% and 121% respectively. The synergy between economic growth and technological innovation has been the most significant engine of change for the last 200 years, but unless we improve our economic, environmental, and social behaviors, the next 100 years could be disastrous. Climate change adaptation and mitigation policies should be integrated into an overall sustainable development strategy. Without sustainable growth, billions more people will be condemned to poverty, and much of civilization could collapse, which is unnecessary since we know enough already to tackle climate change while increasing economic growth.
From 1970 to 2000, atmospheric CO2 concentration increased 1.5 ppm each year, and since then, it has risen 2.1 ppm per year. Last year it climbed even faster, by almost 3 ppm, reaching 392.4 ppm by April 2010. Consequently, the world is warming faster than the latest IPCC projections. Even the most recent estimates may understate reality since they do not take into account permafrost melting. By 2050 another 2.3 billion people could be added to the planet and income per capita could more than double, dramatically increasing greenhouse gases. The Copenhagen Accord achieved a consensus on carbon reduction targets that are internationally verifiable, for the first time. It focused on international cooperation to limit atmospheric CO2 to 450 ppm by 2100, so that the global temperature does not rise by more than 2ºC by 2100. However, scientists have pointed out that the voluntary targets currently declared by major emitters are not low enough to hold CO2 to 450 ppm. There is a growing fear that the target itself is inadequate—that the world needs to lower CO2 to 350 ppm or else the momentum of climate change could grow beyond human ability to reverse it.
Glaciers are melting, polar ice caps are thinning, and coral reefs are dying. Some 30% of fish stocks have already collapsed, and 21% of mammal species and 70% of plants are under threat. Oceans absorb 30 million tons of CO2 each day, increasing their acidity. The number of dead zones—areas with too little oxygen to support life—has doubled every decade since the 1960s. Mangrove forests, salt marshes, and seagrass beds cover less than 1% of the world’s seabed but sequester over half the carbon buried in the ocean floor. The habitats of these plants are being lost at a rate of almost 7% a year. Human consumption of natural resources is 30% larger than nature’s capacity to regenerate. Global ecosystem services are valued at $16–64 trillion, which far exceeds the sums spent to protect them.
It is time for a U.S.–China Apollo-like 10-year goal and global R&D strategy to address climate change, focusing on new technologies like electric cars, saltwater agriculture, carbon capture and reuse, solar power satellites (a Japanese national goal), animal protein without animals, maglev trains, urban systems ecology, and a global climate change collective intelligence to support better decisions and keep track of it all (See Chapter 3). These technologies would have to supplement other key policy measures including carbon taxes, cap and trade schemes, reduced deforestation, industrial efficiencies, cogeneration, conservation, recycling, and switching government subsidies from fossil fuels to renewable energy. The EU has shown that it is possible to continue economic growth while reducing GHG emissions.
Scientists are studying how to create sunshades in space, add iron powder to the oceans to absorb CO2, build towers to suck CO2 from the air, sequester CO2 underground, and reuse carbon at power plants. Other suggestions include retrofitting coal plants to burn leaner and to capture and reuse carbon emissions, raising fuel efficiency standards, growing meat without animals, and increasing vegetarianism (the livestock sector emits more GHGs than transportation does). Other mechanisms could include taxes for carbon, international financial transactions, urban congestion, international travel, and environmental footprints. Such taxes could support international public/private funding mechanism for high-impact technologies. Massive public educational efforts via popular film, television, music, games, and contests should stress what we can do.
Given the difficulty of reaching a unanimous agreement, some argue that alternative forums such as G-20, the Montreal Protocol, or Major Economies Forum may be a more realistic platform to manage climate change. Without a global strategy to address climate change, the environmental movement may turn on the fossil fuel industries. The legal foundations are being laid to sue for damages caused by greenhouse gases. Last year the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals allowed a group of Mississippi landowners to pursue their lawsuit against over 30 major oil, electric, and coal companies for contributing to rising sea levels and Hurricane Katrina’s destruction. Large reinsurance companies estimate the annual economic loss due to climate change could reach $300 billion per year within a decade.
Climate change could be accelerated by dangerous feedbacks: melting ice/snow on tundra reflects less light and absorbs more heat, releasing more methane, increasing global warming, melting more tundra; warming oceans water release methane hydrates from the seabed to the air, warming the atmosphere, melting more ice and warming the water, releasing more methane hydrates; the use of methane hydrates or otherwise disturbing deeper sea beds releases more methane to the atmospheric and accelerates global warming; Antarctic melting reflects less light, absorbs more heat, and increases melting; and the Greenland ice sheet (with 20% of world’s ice) slides into the ocean. Construction of nuclear power plants has begun to increase, although the risk of accidents, waste management, and terrorist usage are not sufficiently addressed. Challenge 1 will be addressed seriously when green GDP increases while poverty and global greenhouse gas emissions decrease for five years in a row.
Regional Considerations
Africa: Southern Africa could lose more than 30% of its maize crop by 2030 due to climate change. Forest loss accelerates desertification and soil erosion, making the continent even more vulnerable to climate change. Re-afforestation, saltwater agriculture along the coasts, and solar energy in the Sahara could be massive sources of sustainable growth.
Asia and Oceania: China is the world's largest CO2 emitter, but half of the recent rise in China's CO2 emissions is caused by the manufacture of goods for other countries. China's newer and planned coal plants are reducing its pollution per kwh. China and India lose 12% and 10% respectively of their GDP due to environmental damage. Agriculture is now China's biggest source of pollution. China satisfies 97% of the global demand of rare metals, critical for manufacturing of high-tech green tech such as solar panels. GHG emissions from Indonesia, the world third largest emitter today, could rise by 57% by 2030, mostly due to continuing logging and conversion of natural ecosystems for agriculture and industrial plantations. Some 40% of the reefs in the Coral Triangle, which contain 75% of the world's coral species and sustain the lives of more than 100 million people in the region, have already been lost. Australia may begin carbon trading in 2011.
Europe: GHG emissions covered under EU ETS fell by 11.6% in 2009 due to recession and changing gas prices. The EU is on track to meet the Kyoto targets of 8% reduction, but whether its members can meet the 20% reduction target by 2020 is still uncertain. Iceland plans to become carbon-neutral by 2025. The global carbon market grew to $144 billion, up 6% from 2008. Of those, $118 billion are from EU ETS. France abandoned the idea of introducing a carbon tax after the Conseil d'Etat ruled it unconstitutional. Climate change may benefit Russian agriculture and increase the country's economic output by 1.1% if the world temperature increases by 2.5°C.
Latin America: Although the deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon is slowing, expansion of its agriculture and livestock, fire, drought, and logging could severely damage or eliminate nearly 60% of the rainforest by 2030, releasing 55.5–96.9 billion tons of CO2. South America has 40% of the planet's biodiversity and 25% of the forests. Farming for biofuel versus food is debated in Brazil while new oil reserves are discovered. Attacks on land tenure and the breakup of farms into smaller parcels are generating irreversible ecological damage in most countries.
North America: The U.S.-initiated Copenhagen Accord includes an agreement for richer countries to contribute $10 billion a year to developing countries in 2010–12 for climate change mitigation and adaption and to mobilize $100 billion in long-term climate financing by 2020. Exxon is investing $600 million in algae for biofuels. U.S. GHG emissions decreased by 5.9% from 2008 to 2009, and greater than the 2.9% decrease in the previous year. Permafrost temperature in northern Alaska increased about 4–7°C during the last century, almost half of it during the last 20 years; data from the northern Mackenzie Valley in the continuous permafrost zone of Canada show a 1°C increase in permafrost temperatures at depths of 20–30 meters since the 1990s.
Source: NOAA National Climatic Data Center with Millennium Project estimates