Is this the world we want to leave to our children?

Sheila Zurbrigg, December 20, 2007, Chronicle Herald -- UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon addresses the Climate Change Conference on Saturday in Bali. The conference adopted a plan to negotiate a new global warming pact by 2009 after the United States reversed its opposition to changes proposed by developing nations. (Ed Wray / AP)

Slowing climate change is not as simple as turning off a tap. The CO2 we emit today stays in the atmosphere for 100 years. Its warming effect continues. Heat accumulates long after we have closed the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions faucet.

This is why over 1,000 scientists with the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have concluded total GHG emissions must be in decline by 2015, at the very latest, to have any chance of keeping global warming to under two degrees C.

Why two degrees? To prevent runaway climate change. Above this level "positive" feedback loops increasingly take over. Thawing Arctic tundra, for example, releases vast quantities of methane, a much more potent GHG than even CO2. As oceans warm, their capacity to absorb, or "sink," CO2 declines. And as the polar ice caps melt, increasing amounts of the sun’s energy are absorbed by now-exposed dark waters rather than reflected back into space. Already these feedback loops contribute an estimated 18 per cent of current warming, a trend which will only intensify.

The next few years are key: 2015 is only seven years away. Yet Canada’s emissions, the highest in the world per person (along with the U.S.), continue to rise.

What are the consequences if we don’t act now?

Last month’s IPCC report predicts dramatic changes in rain distribution around the world. One likely consequence the scientists point to is "severely compromised" access to food in many African countries by 2020. "In some countries," it estimates, "yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50 per cent."

For most of us, many generations (happily) distant from any experience or understanding of hunger, the 50 per cent figure may carry little meaning. Historically, however, European famines were triggered by five to 10 per cent harvest declines. Most starvation occurred not from drastic shortage of food, but from soaring prices. Poor harvests triggered fear, stockpiling and hyperinflation, a sequence which quickly priced the poor out of the foodgrain market. (The panicked response to Y2K eight years ago is just a minor example of how this happens.)

A 50 per cent real decline in food output is simply "off the charts" as famine-trigger. Governments today attempt to steady market foodgrain prices, but the possibility of success with declines of this magnitude is negligible.

These consequences are not remote. Indeed, many see the conflict in Darfur between nomadic tribes and settled farmers to be, at root, the result of global rainfall shifts (The Atlantic Monthly, April 2007). They see severe drought and desertification in the 1980s at the heart of subsequent warfare. Darfur, in other words, may well be "a canary in the coal mine, a glimpse of climate-driven conflict."

The ultimate irony is that those least responsible for global warming will bear by far the most catastrophic consequences. Most GHG emissions (over 80 per cent) added to the atmosphere are ours, not theirs, and continue to come from the rich industrialized countries.

Yet the gravest outcomes the IPCC scientists warn about are to a considerable extent preventable. The necessary technology and energy-efficiency methods already exist that would allow us to make major GHG reductions right away. But only if we act immediately, intelligently, and together.

This means demanding the information we need to be able to act as responsible citizens. Eco-lightbulbs are not enough. And it means insisting that our governments foster, rather than impede, global commitments that are fair.

What is needed from the developed (high income, high emitting) countries? The overwhelming scientific consensus is 25 to 40 per cent GHG reductions below 1990 levels by 2020. All the developed countries, with the exception of Canada, the U.S. and Japan, are committed to this. They recognize that initial major cuts must come from industrialized countries whose emissions are by far the highest, whose economies have benefited from cheap fossil fuels and produced most global warming, and whose wealth makes possible the initial investments toward low-carbon energy systems.

China, with per capita emissions one-sixth our level, also was prepared to commit to major reductions at the recent climate conference in Bali. But it insisted on concrete (rather than voluntary) targets from the biggest emitters (us) in return.

Where is Canada? Our emissions continue to rise – much of this annual increase coming from the tar sands. But Prime Minister Stephen Harper, along with the U.S., continues to reject the 2020 reduction target. At Bali, he offered 20 per cent reduction by 2020. But he did so, misleadingly, by basing this reduction on 2006 levels, not 1990, the standard baseline. This would leave Canada’s emissions still two per cent above 1990 levels in 2020, not 25 to 40 per cent below. The rest of the world at the Bali meeting was not fooled. They were outraged.

Yet because of Canadian and U.S. opposition, 11th-hour agreement was achieved only by omitting concrete targets. The industrialized countries will be "guided" but not bound by the 25 to 40 per cent emission-reduction 2020 targets called for by scientists.

Fortunately Nova Scotia, like California, need not wait for our national government. We can take action ourselves. Last month, our provincial government released its long-awaited energy plan. In it, Premier Rodney MacDonald proposed a 2020 emission reduction target of 10 per cent from 1990 levels.

It, too, falls short of the minimum GHG-emissions reductions required of high-emitting countries. Nevertheless, the plan offers a crucial opening for public engagement and constructive input. One example of innovative ideas for how Nova Scotians can meet essential targets – and realize economic benefits which would flow throughout our province – can be seen in the Ecology Action Centre’s June 2007 carefully researched energy proposal for the province.

But more, and broader, public input is needed urgently too. Many Nova Scotians have responded generously to the disastrous plight of African grandmothers left caring for their 14 million HIV-orphaned grandchildren. Yet had these courageous grandmothers access to the IPCC reports, as we do, what would they also ask of us?

We can no longer pretend that massive harvest failures and water depletion in other continents will not profoundly affect our own society. Is this the world we want to hand to our children?

Sheila Zurbrigg is a health historian in Halifax.