I think it’s time for people to start reconnecting to what is true.
We have been ignorant of the price we going pay, our children are going to pay, our grand children are going to pay and it will be gone for ever, our lives will be different.
— Carlos Eyles, Freediver
I’ve previously written about how the effects of the EU fishing policy is affecting local UK fishermen. But what about the rest of the world? Well the decimation of fish stocks is not only an EU problem. Now EU fishing vessels are helping to destroy fish stocks all around the world, and particular in Africa, with calamitous consequence for local fishermen and communities.
Right now a British company, Cairn Energy, is exploring for oil in the Arctic. The reason they able access these waters? The ice is gone, shrunk to it’s second lowest recorded level, due to global warming and our continued reliance on fossil fuels that drives it.
There is no way to clean up an oil spill in the Arctic.
The company itself have admitted that it would not be possible to clean up a spill in the Arctic. Just think about that for a minute.
Now consider this:
The past six years have been the warmest ever recorded in the Arctic.
The impact of this is very clear when you review the chart to the right which shows the decline of the Arctic sea ice extend from 1979 to the present day.
The melting of the Arctic has severe consequences for the Arctic ecosystem and for the whole planet too. The Arctic acts like a great big refrigerator. It reflects massive amounts of sunlight back out to space (read heat from the sun) in doing so cooling the oceans and global temperatures.
The Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the globe and is experiencing some of the most severe climate impacts on Earth. One of the most notable is the rapid decline in the thickness and extent of sea ice.Some models suggest the Arctic Ocean could be ice-free in summer by 2030 whilst others suggest it could be as early as 2012. Permafrost is thawing, glaciers are melting, and the massive Greenland Ice Sheet is losing ice at record rates.
As the Arctic ice disappears you can, at the very least, expect global temperatures to rise. As this happens it has a severe knock on affect to other major ice bodies like the Greenland ice sheet and Antarctica. If these melt… well, lets just say you should not be buying coastal property.
In short, we just don’t know how quickly the ice is going to melt. We do know that it will and is.
University of Wisconsin-Madison geoscience assistant professor Anders Carlson puts it, “The ice-estimation business is rife with unknown variables and has few known physical constraints, Carlson explains, making ice sheet behaviour — where they melt, how much, how quickly — the largest source of uncertainty in predicting sea level rises”.
No one knows how much warming is “safe”. What we do know is that climate change is already harming people and ecosystems. Its reality can be seen in melting glaciers, disintegrating polar ice, thawing permafrost, dying coral reefs, rising sea levels, changing ecosystems and fatal heat waves.
Arctic oil drillingGreenpeace have been instrumental in bringing the activities of Cairn Energy out into the open.
They tracked down the oil rig which was being guarded by a Danish warship and have been attempting to stop the drilling every since.
Since they found the rig, Greenpeace members have been arrested while they try and peacefully stop this madness.
Read and watch some video about this campaign on the links below. See how corporates and governments are putting money and oil before one of the most important ecosystems on our planet and how a few selfless individuals are making the stand for us all.
In November this year the UNFCCC will be meeting in Durban, South Africa for the COP 17 conference.
Over a decade ago, most countries joined an international treaty — the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) — to begin to consider what can be done to reduce global warming and to cope with whatever temperature increases are inevitable. More recently, a number of nations approved an addition to the treaty: the Kyoto Protocol, which has more powerful (and legally binding) measures.
COP 17’s success is critical. The first commitment period for the Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012 and we need to set new aggressive and legally binding targets for all countries to cut there emissions.
If this fails, then we’ll fail to control the affects of global warming on our plant.
There are many ways you can get involved and make a difference.
They don’t take a lot of time, effort or cost anything. Please consider one or all of the following actions to help the effort:
