Honestly, the environment and climate change matters me most. Watching the daily news and the never ending horror stories about killing thousands of people due to natural disasters make me sad and sometimes helpless.
Is it already too late? The UN panel on climate change has warned that governments worldwide must act fast if the impact of global warming is to be limited at a manageable cost. Its annual report will form the basis for a global climate deal "as soon as possible".
Governments will have to reduce greenhouse emissions to zero by 2100 if the impact of climate change is to be kept in check at an affordable cost, a United Nations report said last Sunday. Such reports are not new. Only the dates are being changed year by year!
Anyway, if rapid steps were not taken to cut the emissions, however, the price could rise considerably, it said, warning that a failure to curb global warming by the end of the 21st century "will bring high risks of severe, widespread and irreversible impacts globally." I am not an expert, but allow me to question if it will be really at the end of the 21st century?
Such an "irreversible impact" would occur, for example, if Greenland's vast ice sheets were to melt, which could result in the swamping of coastal regions and cities. It's melting already. Please check out my last week's column in this publication.
The effects of climate change were already evident in an increase in extremes of heat, heavy rainfall, the acidification of the world's oceans and a rise in sea levels.
According to the report released by the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC), the cost of reducing carbon-dioxide emissions in the short term would not brake global growth to any great degree. It said annual projected growth of 1.6 to 3.0 percent a year in consumption of goods and services would be cut by just 0.06 of a percentage point per year if immediate action were taken.
The report is a 40-page synthesis summing up 5,000 pages of climate change studies already published since September 2013. The studies establish with 95-percent certainty that almost all global warming seen since the 1950's is man-made. Imagine - since the 1950's!!!
The document, which has been edited by officials from more than 120 governments meeting in the Danish capital, Copenhagen, has been furnished guidelines for a UN deal on global warming scheduled to be struck at an international summit in Paris already in late 2015.
Options for limiting the amount of greenhouse gas emissions included improving energy efficiency and moving from fossil fuels to wind, solar or nuclear power, according to the study. Words of hope? What really happened since then?
"We have the means to limit climate change," then IPCC chairman Rejendra Pachauri said. Yes, sure. And?
"The solutions are many and allow for continued economic and human development. All we need is the will to change, which we trust will be motivated by knowledge and an understanding of the science of climate change," he added.
Did our global governments understand the science of climate change? And what are the logically following steps and law implementations?
