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Katrina - A global wake-up call on climate change
In the aftermath of the devastating hurricane Katrina Friends
of the Earth Europe has called the catastrophe a wake-up call
for world leaders to act upon the global threat of climate
change by swiftly agreeing new steps to cut greenhouse gas
emissions. According to Friends of the Earth Europe, any delay
will mean more people suffering from more intense weather
disasters as a result of global climate change, including in
the United States, but also in Europe, as the 2005 floods,
droughts and storms show. Friends of the Earth in particular
criticised the continued refusal of US President Bush to join
international efforts to curb global warming.
Jan Kowalzig from Friends of the Earth Europe said:
"Our hearts are with the victims of this tragedy, and disaster
relief must be top priority for the coming weeks. Looking for
someone to blame will not help the people in New Orleans. Yet,
it is in our hands to avoid an increase in number and
intensity of similar weather disasters around the globe,
including their destructive impacts on our societies and
economies."
"The cure is well known: we need a drastic cut in greenhouse
gas emissions. With all respect to the tragedy, this means
President Bush must rethink his stance on global warming. In
the face of mounting evidence of rapid climate change the US
President has so far downplayed the scale of the problem and
refused to take action to tackle it. His Administration has
worked tirelessly to derail international agreements on
climate change and sought to put narrow US economic interests
above global climatic stability."
"The price to pay is too high, as we learned from this
disaster, which is a taste of what we will have to live with
if we continue to pollute the atmosphere."
Friends of the Earth Europe notes with concern that extreme
weather events such as the hurricane Katrina will become more
common as climate change is proceeding apace. Although there
is at present no means by which to tell whether this
particular storm was due to human induced global warming, the
devastation it has caused is consistent with the projections
generated by climate change models that suggest such storms
will become more severe as the world warms up. Also,
scientists are convinced that the increasing water
temperatures in the world's oceans, from where this hurricane
gained its destructive powers, are indeed a result of man-made
global warming. The intensity of such hurricanes has increased
by 50% over the last decades. [1]
Jan Kowalzig continues:
"The world must act together to avoid irreversible climate
change whose consequences are set to get worse. The impacts
are ubiquitous. Hurricanes in the Caribbean region, but also
the recent floods in Romania, Austria or Germany, the extreme
drought and forest fires in Portugal, or the storms in the
Baltic States and Scandinavia earlier this year clearly show
the trend."
"This is also a great challenge for Europe. Greenhouse gas
emissions are rising, and agreed policies do not deliver the
necessary reductions, mostly because national economy
ministers block meaningful action in order to protect a few
individual industry sectors. They do so at the expense of the
overall economy and society, which will be increasingly
suffering the negative impacts of unabated climate change."
[2]
The next opportunity to tackle climate change is the UN
climate change conference COP11, taking place between 28
November and 8 December in Montreal, Canada. Governments will
meet to formally begin new negotiations on future action on
climate change for the time after 2012, when current
provisions of the Kyoto Protocol end. Friends of the Earth
Europe calls on the European Union to show leadership at these
negotiations, ensuring a robust framework for the future that
delivers real emission cuts in order avoid the more
catastrophic effects of climate change. This will mean
emission reductions for industrialised countries of at least
minus 30% by 2020, compared to 1990 levels. It will also mean
that rich countries will have to provide finance and
technology for developing countries to allow them to develop
in a low-carbon, sustainable manner.
CONTACT
Jan Kowalzig, Friends of the Earth Europe
Phone +32-2-5426102
jan.kowalzig@foeeurope.org
NOTES
[1] Research findings published in the science journal Nature
in August suggest increased sea surface temperatures as a
consequence of global warming, will lead to more intense
hurricanes. The analysis, by climatologist Professor Kerry
Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says
that major storms in the Atlantic and Pacific since the 1970s
have increased in intensity by about 50 per cent. This trend
is closely linked to rises in the average temperatures of the
sea surface. See: Nature, 4 August: "Increasing
destructiveness of tropical cyclones over the past 30 years",
by Kerry Emanuel.
[2] See also "How the European Union responds to the threat of
global climate change"; an assessment of existing and planned
EU measures to fight climate change. June 2005; available here.
Friends of the Earth Europe campaigns for sustainable and fair societies and for the protection of the environment,
unites more than 30 national organisations with thousands of local groups
and is part of the world's largest grassroots environmental network, Friends of the Earth International.
