farmdoc's blog post number 411

I’m half-way through Gwynne Dyer’s 2008 book Climate Wars. It’s about the geopolitical consequences of climate change. And it’s very scary. Though not, I add, without hope. One important point Dyer makes is that though it’s fine for individuals and families to use compact fluorescent lights and drive hybrid cars, the changes needed to stop global warming and thus climate change reaching a critical and probably irreversible level, are so major they can only be achieved by governments. I agree. With atmospheric CO2 now 382 parts per million [ppm] and the consensus critical level 450 ppm, there’s no time to waste. I’ve previously wondered about the usefulness of Earth Hour and Earth Day. The same goes for World Environment Day [WED] – which is today. Wikipedia says WED was established by the UN General Assembly in 1972, and each year a different city hosts it (2009: Mexico City) and it has a different theme (2009: Your Planet Needs You - UNite to Combat Climate Change). Cute. It’s aim is ‘to stimulate awareness of the environment and enhance political attention and public action’. WED’s lovely in theory, and I can’t argue with the process. But I’m too old to reinvent the wheel, so I can but say again: ‘Rousing stuff, but useless unless every single world leader assigns global warming and climate change the highest policy priority. If they haven’t done so by now, they never will’.