Climate change won’t wait for recession’s end

Unprecedented challenges of economic recession, global warming, peak oil and shortages of usable water have all emerged simultaneously.

Argument that the problems of recession and rising unemployment are more immediate and, therefore, measures to reduce the national carbon footprint should be put to the side, are not sustainable.

The bigger the delay in dealing with global warming, the bigger the cost of abating climate change - and the greater the danger that the world will have reached the tipping point where avoiding catastrophic change is impossible.

There can be no economy without an environment. There is no way that politicians can make decisions based on a compromise with the environment or the science on which global warming is based.

It is true that global recession will slow down the growth in carbon emissions. It has already led to a temporary respite in the growth of new carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere. It is one of the reasons why the price of emission permits in Europe has recently collapsed.

But the overwhelming fact is that, even with a 0.8 degree increase in global warming since pre-industrial times, tipping points have already been reached. The Arctic and Antarctic are melting and scientists believe the Greenland ice sheet is already heading for total meltdown.

Thermal inertia, the fact that it takes up to a century for carbon dioxide put into the atmosphere to have its full climatic impact, means that there is a further 0.6 degrees of global warming in the pipeline, even if the world could agree on measures that would result in immediate carbon neutral growth.

The recession should be seen as an opportunity to accelerate investment in new technologies to reduce our carbon footprint and improve the quality of life without having to increase taxes or interest rates to "make way" for the new investments.

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Source: The Age