Though, at lima, representatives of 200 nations committed to reduce fossil fuel emissions, problems continue. The lima Accord lacks legal sanction; nor does it bind countries to reducing emissions to a particular level
According to a recent paper by Douglas J McCauley in Science magazine, human activity is causing unprecedented damage to oceans and marine species inhabiting them. The main causes include excessive human consumption and habitat loss. Carl Zimmer’s recent piece in his column, “Matter,” in The New York Times, which points this out, adds that fish farms are destroying mangroves; bottom trawlers, scraping ocean floors with their nets, have already affected 20,000 square miles and reduced to tracts of continental shelves to rubble. The effect of destroying continental shelves will be severe. They teem with life because sunlight can penetrate their shallow waters and not the depths of oceans.
Seabed mining threatens to destroy unique ecosystems, besides taking pollution to the deep sea. Contracts covering 4,60,000 square miles — against zero in 2000 — have been signed. There are also incidental damages. While the continuing ban on whaling is most laudable, the growing number of container ships are killing whales through accidents.
Increasing carbon emission is making seawater acidic and hence, inhospitable to marine life. Global warming, Mr Zimmer’s piece cited above states, has caused a 40 per cent decline in coral reefs besides leading to the migration of some fish to cooler waters. Not all breeds may be lucky enough to be able to do so.
There, however, is a silver lining. According to Mr McCauley and his team, as cited by Mr Zimmer, the oceans are still intact and wild enough to bounce back to health given timely measures, which are especially needed because marine species are known to have become extinct and it is difficult to find out what is happening under water over thousands of square kilometres. Besides, developments in one ecosystem may not indicate what is happening worldwide. Nor can one view what is happening to oceans and marine life in isolation from developments on the land, where, to cite an example, much of the toxic emissions occur before being carried into the seas. Drastically reducing — preferably ending — the extremely high level of pollution in the Ganga is, thus, imperative for the well-being not only of the long and wide valley through which it meanders but of the Bay of Bengal, which it joins.
While attempts to reduce pollution by industrial effluents and human waste must accelerate, it is global warming that requires the most immediate attention. 2014 was the hottest year since 1880, when climate-related temperatures started being recorded. The fact that the 10 hottest years since 1880 have all occurred since 1997, further underlines the accelerating pace of global warming. According to a draft report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released on August 26 last year, the earth is now 1.5 degree Fahrenheit hotter than what it was before the industrial revolution. A continued rapid growth in emissions could conceivably raise a temperature by over eight degree fahrenheit. Carbon emissions, which increased worldwide from a rate of 1.3 per cent between 1970 and 2000 to 2.2 per cent from 2000 to 2010, appears to be continuing to increase, posing, in the words of the draft report, “severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts” over the coming decades.
The Panel’s final report, released on November 2 last year, states that to achieve the goal of Governments to limit earth’s warming to a maximum of 3.6 degree Fahrenheit (two degree celsius) above the pre-industrial revolution level, emissions from additional fossil fuel burning had to be restricted to about one trillion tonne of carbon dioxide. It, however, further says that energy companies had booked coal and petroleum reserves which would generate several times higher emissions and were spending over $600 billion a year to find more. Utilities and oil companies, it adds, continue to build coal-fired power plants and refineries, and Governments are spending another $600 billion or so directly subsidising the consumption of fossil fuels. In sharp contrast, less than $400 billion a year is being spent worldwide to reduce emissions or otherwise cope with climate change, an amount smaller than the revenue of a single American oil company, ExxonMobil.
The reports also reiterated some of the disastrous consequences that would follow failure to reduce emissions — drowning of entire island nations, the flooding of cities, mass migrations of humans and other living species, creation of climate refugees, extinction of plant and animal life, mass destruction of forests, diminishing food production and a situation in which playing and working in the open could be dangerous for people in the hottest parts of the year. The worst victims would be the poor who would be the hardest hit, both by rising food prices following declining production and intensified weather disasters.
There has, of course, been some encouraging straws in the wind. On November 11 last year, Presidents Obama of the United States and Xi Jinping of China arrived at a long-term agreement by which the US agreed to emit 26 to 28 per cent less carbon in 2025 than it did in 2005, thus doubling the targeted pace of reduction for the period. On his part, Mr Xi, promised to stop China’s emissions from growing by 2030 and, to that end, to ensure that clean energy sources like solar power and windmills would account for 20 per cent of his country’s energy generation by that year.
The historic agreement, as well as President Obama’s announcement on November 14 that the US would contribute three billion dollars to a new international fund to help the world’s poorest nations to cope with climate change, doubtless contributed to the growing momentum for action which led to another historic accord — the one in lima, Peru, on December 14 last year, under which representatives of the nearly 200 participating nations committed their respective countries to reducing fossil fuel emissions. Each country would produce, by March 31 this year, a plan detailing how much emissions it would cut by 2020 and the domestic policies it would follow to that end. Those failing to keep the deadline would have to produce their plans by June.
Problems, however, remain. The lima Accord, as the agreement is called, lacks legal sanction; nor does it bind countries to reducing emissions to a particular level. It depends on countries honouring their commitments, which may not happen in all cases. Second, a Republican-dominated Congress may make President Obama’s promise difficult to implement. Hence, the need to keep one’s fingers crossed.
(The accompanying visual is of a dormant ‘smoker’. The pillars are a veritable mineral motherlode, forming lumps of copper, lead, silver, zinc and gold. They are also home to whole populations of deep sea life)