Hamilton Spectator : Climate: A stitch in time ...

Climate: A stitch in time ...

By Gwynne Dyer | October 4, 2006

It's a law of physics that translates well into the behaviour of human beings: the greater the mass involved, the more effort is needed to overcome its inertia. But it doesn't read very well as an epitaph for civilization.

The information we need in order to act is around us every day.

Three small, low-key stories in the inner pages of the newspapers I read at breakfast this morning -- the sort of stories you find in the media almost every day -- should have been enough to galvanize every reader into instant action. But the human version of the laws of physics gets in the way.

The first story was a warning by the Meteorological Office in Britain that summer temperatures in southeastern England may reach as high as 46 C (115 F) by the end of this century. "By 2100, such heat waves are likely to occur almost every year, and could occur several times in any given summer," said the Met Office.

London with the summer temperatures similar to Kuwait's seems incredible, but the Met Office was relentlessly reasonable. Depending on how fast greenhouse gas emissions rise, it pointed out, we are facing an average rise in global temperature of between 2 C and 5 C (4.5 F and 11 F) by the end of this century.

If the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is halted at the level of 450 parts per million, then we get away with "only" two degrees hotter. But we are already at 385 ppm, so that requires immediate global agreement on radical action to curb the growth of CO2 emissions. Allow the current model of economic development and energy use to continue basically unchanged, and you end up with 800 ppm by the end of the century and the five-degrees hotter world.

The second story in this morning's papers was about a "green growth plus" strategy devised by consultants at PricewaterhouseCoopers, the U.S.-based giant that provides a wide range of business services including risk management. Basically, the report said that it wouldn't cost all that much to save civilization.

The economists at PricewaterhouseCoopers calculated that serious efforts to improve energy efficiency, greater use of renewable energy, and new technologies for