December 14, 2010

Cancun's Climate Summit

If you haven't heard yet, there are currently climate talk on Cancun. Over 200 delegates from around the world gather to discuss about the current climate change.

Now, we know from many of this climate summit that action are far greater than words alone. So, even though the 200 delegates agreed to spend almost $100 billions towards 2020 to tackle the climate problems, and the act of preserving the forest, helping the poor to adapt and share clean techs, this is just words and promises, actions after the promises is what important.

Some of the important evidence of the dangerous rising in global temperature is the heat wave in Russia and China, also the flooding in Pakistan. Some scientist however, do not believe that this is directly the result of the rising global temperature. But most of the scientist do agree that the rising temperature are due to human effects.

The main talk of the summit have change since the last one. Now they are talking more about adapting to the new environment. Tackling the issue is still important, however seeing how "well" that was in the past few years, the idea of tackling global warming has been put on side.

More greater threat however are being recognize, such as the rising in sea level. This has come to attention in the past months, when several smaller island, has start losing their coast. This island, will in the near future, gone from the map, if no actions were made. The coastline cities and settlement has to be relocated, and the cost are astronomical. This is something that the delegates discuss during the summit to adapt to the new environment.

Scientist predict, the rise of sea level will be up to 1.4-2.0 meters in next years, and could be disastrous for the coastline settlements and island nations. Most of them will be wipe out, and they will be without nationality.

To date, the Earth is now 0.8 degrees celcius higher during the Industrial Revolution. Scientist predict this will keep rising until about 1.5 degrees in the next few years, and would bring irreversible effects. Although actions are being made, it is clear that this actions will take time, too long to take effects, and most likely wouldn't do any significant changes in the near future.

The significant of this summit is how to adapt and help the coastline and island nations in the near future, should the rising of sea level changes the modern map. This is however, like I've said is very costly, the idea of resettlement is just too big to consider. Another problem is when the island nation is wipe out, who would take this people that is without nationality? Who would risk, diseases, economic and space to help this people?

Climate change is just gonna get worse in the future. To date, we are about 6.8 billions people, in 2050, we will have to deal with 9 billions human living on this tiny blue planet. How do we cope?

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