Thursday 20 August 2009

The World's Climate Tipping Point!

For those not in the UK, the Conservative party is one of our three main political groups and may well form the next government. I was reading a booklet from them about local government and the environment when the following sentence stopped me in my tracks.

“It is too late to avoid climate change but taking action now could avoid it’s more extreme and dangerous impacts”.

In plain language we have passed the point of no return, the tipping point so long warned about and yet so long ignored by the vast majority. We know the result of tipping points in nature, once a species numbers fall below a certain level it becomes unsustainable and numbers will dwindle to zero, the same happens in the worlds fishing grounds, numbers fall and the fishing grounds are fished out. Earlier civilisations have gone through tipping points. The irrigation-related salt build up in the Sumerian soil overwhelmed the capacity to deal with it and for the Mayans a time came when the effects of deforestation and then the follow on loss of topsoil were unmanageable. For more info see HERE

Social tipping points are not easy to define, but obviously the more developed parts of the world can, and does, have the resources to deal a new threat or threats far more effectively than the undeveloped countries. AIDS is the most obvious example of the ability as infection rates in the developed world are less than 1% in some undeveloped countries it is around 20%. Nearly 80 million people are added to the world’s population each year, yet the majority of them are born within in countries among the least able to support them. These ever increasing pressures on a struggling economy and infrastructure are leading to social breakdown.

Although for the developed areas water shortages are lawn threatening rather than life threatening in many countries this is not the case, in India and other parts of Asia The need to cut carbon emissions has been blindingly obvious for many years now, but so far there is not a single carbon neutral country. Technically possible, yes, but is it politically possible???

Oil abstraction has peaked, and although the ‘popular news media’ talks this threat down, I was amazed to find confirmation of this fact in the investment focused MoneyWeek where there was also the warning "The planet's metal supply is fast depleting, and the quality of what's left is lower, where 30 tons of copper ore once produced a ton of copper, it now takes 500 tons, even water's running out”. The number one issue is, of course food and water, the Sumerian and Mayan civilisations are the long-gone evidence of this.

The effects of the Climate Chaos we have no option but to deal with are now causing heat waves in various countries, but these will not only affect them, but also us as the Tropical Zone is now expanding, also see HERE and HERE.

The World’s tipping point is past, the next problem is in our countries political systems, can they pass the tipping point of understanding regarding Climate Change while we are still able to take , as the booklet I quoted from said “action now could avoid it’s more extreme and dangerous impacts”. We have the technologies available to enable us to stabilise the Earth’s climate, just as we have to feed the hungry and heal the sick, the question is though, is the political will of the voters there also?

In Revelation 21:1 we are promised a “new heaven and a new Earth.” I have often wondered if this is because the old earth has been damaged beyond repair. At the time of Revelation, when God looks at the damage that has been done to His creation and asks who is responsible I want to be able to say ‘not guilty’, are you going to join me?

1 comment:

Stella said...

Yes, I do want to join you.

Oh dear. But how? how? how? do we motivate a complacent and profit driven world to WAKE UP? How do we reach hearts and minds so selfishly oblivious to what is happening to our beautiful planet earth?

Surely, when a political party,is prepared to come out with a statement like this, then we know that things really are bad.