By Jack Bernard, contributing columnist
PEACHTREE CITY, Ga. | A most disturbing international climate change report has been issued by the United Nations. It is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report.
It is extremely lengthy, scientific and detailed and also difficult to understand. For these reasons, as well as political considerations, the American public has heard little about it.
Below, here is a short summary of the findings.
- Global warming is a reality and is primarily caused by greenhouse gasses. These emissions are because of “unsustainable energy use, land use and land-use change, lifestyles and patterns of consumption.”
- Climate change, possibly irreversible, caused by our collective actions, has already led to immense human suffering due to adverse weather conditions. Extreme climate has a disproportionate impact upon vulnerable populations (particularly lower income people), including food and water insecurity.
- Climate change caused by humans has created weather extremes, rising sea levels, heavier precipitation, increased fires, and more severe droughts.
- Climate change has other proven negative effects, including flooding and the destruction of terrestrial, ocean and freshwater ecosystems. Such events cause damage to infrastructure, especially in coastal areas. They have a negative effect on nutrition in addition to causing widespread dislocation of vulnerable populations, creating mental health trauma.
The report goes on to say that many nations have made progress in trying to reverse climate change via “urban greening, restoration of wetlands and upstream forest ecosystems.” However, it also indicates that there is “insufficient” financing for these efforts in third world nations. And that efforts are “fragmented, incremental, sector-specific and unequally distributed across regions.”
Here is the most worrisome part of the report as it addresses future implementation of efforts to control climate change. World-wide obstacles include “limited resources, lack of private sector and citizen engagement, insufficient mobilization of finance (including for research), low climate literacy, lack of political commitment, limited research and/or slow and low uptake of adaptation science, and low sense of urgency.”
Below, I will give you my take on each area as it pertains to the United States.
There is clearly limited funding devoted to climate change, insufficient to stop the disaster before us. Countries which have the resources, like the USA, are increasingly pressured by conservatives to spend their funds for research or projects that have immediate short-term benefits for their own national populations, not spending monies on long-term international items like climate control.
Further, there is an obvious lack of engagement and political commitment in the USA, in large part caused by willful climate illiteracy on the part of Republican voters. Conservatives either still do not (a) believe in climate change or (b) think that climate is natural evolution, not man made.
Polling confirms this fact. In 2010, 25 percent of Republicans believed that “global climate change is a major threat to our country”. Despite all of the evidence to the contrary, only 23 percent of the GOP believe that now. On the other hand, 78 percent of Democrats believe in climate change.
Over the total population, only 54 percent believe in climate change as a human caused phenomena. This figure is much lower than in other developed democracies. For example, 81 percent of French and 73 percent of Germans believe climate change to be a major threat.
In short, I and so many others, are highly pessimistic that our nation and our world will avoid further deterioration of our climate. And this deterioration will lead to severely negative consequences for our progeny and for the world.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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