The Hindu Business Line : Survival of Man

WILL MAN be able to survive the climate changes that have begun to happen on our planet, thanks to the economic development of human civilisation. In a matter of a couple of centuries, the world will in all probability become too warm to suit the continued existence of the human species, which could trigger its extinction. The tragedy of the cataclysmic event would lie in the fact that the final denouement of the human species would be a direct offshoot of its quest for material progress

Since it has been proved beyond all doubt that economic development — principally industrialisation, fuelled by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas — is mainly responsible for the weather aberrations being noticed, perhaps the best way to combat the climate-threat would be to go slow with such development and/or amend its operation so that the adverse effects on the weather are minimised.

Briefly, that is what the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is all about, a protocol that has just come into force with the latest ratification by Russia. But, first, not everyone may agree with the proposition that the planet's weather is in fact changing beyond recognition, to a point where the very existence of mankind is certain to be threatened.

On a macro scale, an analysis of temperature records shows that the earth has warmed by an average of 0.5 degrees Celsius over the past century and the corresponding increase over the next 100 years is expected to significantly surpass any such change during the past 10,000 years.

Research indicates that the average global surface temperature could increase by almost 0.5 degree Celsius each decade during the next century, adding up to a severe five degree step-up by the year 2100. According to one view, what this would in effect mean is that global warming over the next century would represent a change in temperature "between the peak of the last ice age, some 25,000 years ago, and today".

So, is this reason enough for the world's nations to act in concert to stave off a sweaty, hot end to life on the planet? To all rational minds, this should be the case, and it is fortunate that a vehicle to implement such a programme is also in existence in the shape of the Kyoto Protocol

It must be one of the abiding mysteries of the human mind that, even when faced with such a definite and uncomfortable climate scenario, the US has decided not to be a party to the global effort to reduce the damage being done to the environment on the ground that the costs of such participation would harm its economy and that developing economies like India and China should be a part of the effort before Washington can agree to be a participant.

Perhaps there are some Americans — among them, the President, Mr George Bush Jr, who dissociated the US from the Kyoto Protocol in 2001 — who feel that the US can jump off the planet and settle on a new colony set up somewhere in space when the climate on Mother Earth becomes too hot to handle.

This may or may not be so, but the message to the world clearly is that both rich and poor (specially the big among the latter) should do everything in their power to cut down the flow of the greenhouses gases, thus giving a fair change to our distant descendants to have their share of laughter and tears before the Earth one day is reduced to an inert mass hurling towards an inevitable, cataclysmic end.

Ranabir Ray Choudhury

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