Global Warming or Terrorism: Which Is a Bigger Threat?

Pacific News ^ | 12/12/05 | Syed Arif Hussaini

[Libloather]

Global Warming or Terrorism: Which Is a Bigger Threat?
Commentary, Syed Arif Hussaini,
Pakistan Link, Dec 12, 2005

Sponsored by the UN, attended by almost 10,000 representatives from 189 countries, environmental groups, scientific organizations and businesses, the United Nations Climate Change Conference just finished in Montreal, Canada. Inaugurating the November 28-December 9 conference, Canadian Environment Minister Stephane Dion called for a “more effective, more inclusive long-term approach to climate change”.

Several observers interpreted his observations as an appeal to the United States, the leading consumer of oil and gas and emitter of greenhouse gases, whose President, George Bush, had decided in 2001 to withdraw from the Kyoto protocol that had been enthusiastically endorsed earlier by his predecessor, Bill Clinton. Bush’s argument: the restrictions in the protocol would adversely affect economic activities in the country.

While the conference had just started in Montreal, President Bush in a major speech at the US Naval Academy in Maryland rejected strongly the demands for early withdrawal from Iraq saying “America will not run in the face of car bombers and assassins so long as I am your Commander-in Chief”.

Conspicuous by its absence in his statements is any mention of the conference in Montreal. Being the Republican President, the interests of big businesses and corporations hold a special place in his scale of priorities.

The Kyoto Protocol agreed to in 1997 commits industrial states to cut their combined emissions of greenhouse gases by 5.2% below 1990 levels by 2012. The protocol became a legally binding treaty on February 17, 2005 for all the 38 industrial and over a 100 other states who have ratified it. The treaty suffered a massive blow in 2001 when the US responsible for about quarter of the world’s emissions, pulled out.

President Bush maintains that the treaty is fatally flawed, partly because it does not require developing countries to cut down emissions. China and India fall into this category, although they are two of the world’s biggest producers of greenhouse gases. Both have ratified the Kyoto Protocol, which acknowledges that developing countries contribute the least to climate change but will quite likely suffer the most from its ill effects.

The Protocol is based on the findings of over 2,000 scientists from around the world who have conducted since 1988 the most extensive enquiry into world climate changes and have declared unanimously that human-caused global warming has already set in and would continue to go from bad to worse unless drastic measures were taken to reverse the trend.

Chairman of the UN-supported Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, summed up their findings in the apocalyptic prediction: “We are risking the ability of human race to survive”. The top British scientist, Sir David King, had gone further by calling the climate change, “The biggest danger humanity has faced in 5,000 years of civilization.”

Scientists working in Antarctica have confirmed that levels of greenhouse gases are higher today than at any time in the past 650,000 years. They have also confirmed that humans are responsible for the increase.

The world temperature has already increased by one degree Fahrenheit, sea levels have gone up by 4 to 7 inches, record heat wave in 2003 left 35,000 dead across Western Europe, many more in South Asia and elsewhere. The monsoons, which brought rains to the farms of South Asia with almost clockwise precision, have turned quite erratic. The world is experiencing more hurricanes, tornadoes, downpours, heat waves, droughts and blizzards. In their wake come flooding, landslides, power-outages, crop failures, property damage, disease, hunger, acute poverty and even loss of life.

Weather pundits were surprised at the torrential rains in California and elsewhere in the US last January. One after the other, several tornadoes smashed the coasts of Florida. Hurricanes, one after another, including the monstrous Katrina kept smashing life and property around the Gulf of Mexico. On the other side of the globe, the northern areas of South Asia have been buffeted with unusual snowstorms claiming many lives. Even an arid area like Balochistan was subjected to torrential rains.

Bush administration’s opposition to the restrictions in the Kyoto agreement does not emanate from any super-power arrogance but from the compulsion of a Republican government to place the interests of big businesses ahead of any other consideration.

American people are by nature and tradition quite charitable. Their current administration, however, looks at such issues through a partisan prism.

The principal reason for the US government reluctance in endorsing the Kyoto Protocol is probably the loss of some $400 billion, according to one estimate, for the US industries and corporations by a slowing down of their activities.

President Bush no longer enjoys the support of all parts of the country on this issue, like his bellicose policy on Iraq that has lost people’s general endorsement. His popularity has sunk deep. No wonder his ostrich-like conduct on the climate issue has been rejected by nine eastern states who are ready to sign an agreement setting Kyoto style legal limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power houses. New York and New Jersey are among these rebel states. In California, Governor Schwarzengger is forging ahead with legislation to cut emissions from cars by 30 % within a decade. Not only that, 187 mayors from US towns and cities have pledged to adopt Kyoto targets. And, many carmakers have already put on roads hybrid cars.

Mr. Bush believes in staying the course, no matter what. He appears obsessed with the war on terror, so the climate issue will have to take a seat far in the back. But, the people at large have not taken leave of their senses.

[Chena]

Global Warming or Terrorism: Which Is a Bigger Threat?

FACTS suggest that terrorism is a bigger threat. Terrorism is not a theory, thousands of dead people will tell you so.

[kajingawd]

Global Warming or Terrorism: Which Is a Bigger Threat?


Global warming of course...Just imagine how it's going to be ...slowly developping in front of us...1/1000th of a degree every decade. THE SICK PHOQUES...and every year in between those 1/1000th degree cycles, we will be reminded how cruel we are, how insensitive we are. We'll be shamed by the scientists and the hollywood elites, they will show us the future, 700 years from now, when the earth is actually cooler than it is now...and they will blame the Global cooling on Global warming , that was caused by Evil oil and greenhouse gases...and, and...and

so yeh, global warming is BY FAR the biggest threat to brain activity