By Francesca Davis
Efforts over a decade to stabilise the Earth's rising temperature are on the verge of collapse, Worldwatch Institute researchers announced in a special issue of World Watch magazine in October.
Negotiations over the details of the Kyoto protocol, which began in Buenos Aires on November 2, have become more and more acrimonious. These divisions may lead to an insufficient number of industrial nations ratifying the protocol.
The Buenos Aires meeting is seen as a last chance. According to shocking evidence presented in Buenos Aires by Britain's respected Hadley Centre for Climate Change, based on calculations by the world's biggest supercomputer, the world is facing severe consequences of global warming:
- in the next 50 years, climate change will result in millions of people across the globe suffering from hunger, flooding, water shortage and disease;
- by 2050, the number of people affected by floods will rise from 5 million to 100 million; by 2080 it will be 200 million;
- an extra 30 million people will go hungry by 2050 because large Â鶹´«Ã½ of Africa will be too dry to grow crops;
- an extra 170 million people around the world will suffer water shortages;
- malaria will spread across the globe, even threatening Europe.
The world's food production will be affected by rising temperatures, particularly impacting on Africa and the United States.
Almost 20% more Africans will be at risk of hunger because of lower crop yields. Wheat and maize yields will drop by up to 10% in the US wheat belt.
While countries at higher latitudes, like Canada, are likely to have higher crop yields, globally there will be a food shortfall of 90 million tonnes by 2050.
After 2050, the situation will get worse. Scientists originally hoped that with greenhouse gas emissions reduced, the world's climate would stabilise at a warmer temperature in the second half of next century. They thought that extra plant and tree growth might moderate global warming.
While this will be true until 2050, new findings show that thereafter the lack of rainfall in key areas will result in northern Brazil's Amazon rainforest turning into a desert. So might parts of eastern US, southern Europe and northern Australia.
A decrease in annual rainfall of up to 500 millimetres in some areas, combined with temperature rises of up to 7° C, will begin the process of forest dieback. This will release an unexpected surge of 2 billion tonnes of carbon a year as forests rot or are burned.
This makes the campaign to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions even more urgent: more extreme climate change could prove fatal for our species. The Hadley report also raises the question of how to sustain the millions of people who will suffer dislocation and disease in the immediate future and who are suffering right now.
Fifty-six countries were hit by severe floods this year, and at least 45 were stricken by drought. China was particularly hard hit, with the flooding of the Yangtze River causing US$36 billion in losses, killing 2500 and displacing 56 million people. Another 21 million people were made homeless by the flooding of two-thirds of Bangladesh for over a month.
Less violent but just as relentless are rising sea levels in the Pacific. "If you are living on Nauru, you can actually see and feel the change that has happened", said Ludwig Keke, a member of the Pacific island delegation to the Buenos Aires meeting.
Rising sea levels have already drowned some islands, which contain sacred sites, in the small nations of Kiribati and Tuvalu. Kiribati has already had to move roads inland on its main island because the Pacific Ocean has eaten into the shore.
Higher temperatures are also reducing islanders' fresh water supply. "Our underground wells are always empty, our fish ponds, where we cultivate fish, are so dry even the fish are dying, almost cooked in their own wells", said Keke.
Pacific islanders fear for the future of their traditional homes and unique cultures. In Niue and Palau, the dead lie in caves near the ocean, and people are discussing moving their ancestors further inland because of the rising ocean.
The problem of what to do with people in the Pacific islands and Bangladesh whose homes have literally disappeared under water is posed now, not in the distant future. It will take the redirection of enormous resources to address the social effects of climate change, a conclusion those most able to fund it refuse to accept.
The refusal of the International Monetary Fund to cancel the debts of the Central American countries hit by hurricane Mitch starkly shows this. It is also apparent at the faltering negotiation process in Buenos Aires, where progress towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions was blocked at every turn by the intransigence of the oil and coal conglomerates and the governments that represent them.
International insurance companies are scrambling to avoid payouts in climate change-affected areas, which were estimated at $72 billion in the first seven months of 1997 alone.
The world's first climate disaster map, compiled by scientists and researchers at Munich Re, one of the world's largest re-insurance companies, is currently circulating amongst insurance firms. Insurers are planning to withdraw insurance cover from areas threatened by sea level rises and frequent storms, mostly islands in the Caribbean, Indian Ocean and the Pacific, and also where reductions in rainfall such as over the wheat belt in the US, can be expected.
The map indicates particular countries that are vulnerable to the effects of climate change. In Britain for example, property will be increasingly vulnerable to higher wind speeds, and the coastline of the North Sea can expect flooding from rising sea levels.
Residents of Wollongong, victims of freak flooding this year, have already had to fight for compensation for destroyed homes.
While the multinationals rush to protect themselves from financial losses, more and more ordinary people are dying. Climate disruption is leading to the spread of infectious diseases, according to Paul Epstein of the Harvard Medical School.
Rising temperatures and more regular rainfall are allowing tropical and subtropical diseases to move into new areas where people have no immunity to them. In the last year, tens of thousands of Africans were hit by Rift Valley fever, and 200 died.
The World Health Organisation has documented "quantitative leaps" in the incidence of malaria in recent years. The Harvard Medical School estimates 60% of the world's population will get malaria by 2050. Outbreaks of hantavirus and cholera have also increased, especially due to floods.
Climate instability is also causing record-breaking heat waves. One hundred Texans died in a summer heat spell this year when temperatures in Dallas rose above 35° C for weeks on end. An estimated 3000 died in India's most intense heat wave in 50 years.
Six of the first eight months of this year were the warmest since reliable records began in the mid-1800s. The immense changes wrought by such temperature rises are shown in the retreat of the world's glaciers and the possible collapse of Antarctica's Larsen B ice shelf.
Half the glacier ice in the European Alps has disappeared in this century. Glaciers in the US and the Patagonian Andes in South America are shrinking fast. The Alaskan Colombia Glacier is retreating at an average of two kilometres a year.
The temperature in Alaska, Siberia and north-western Canada has increased by almost 3° C over the past 30 years.
The pace of climate change is faster than it has ever been. The question remains whether the human species' social and political organisation can change quickly enough to keep up.