Climate Change should not become sole focus

5 December, 2009

Global Warming should not become dogma, and should not divert energy and resources from problems like pollution and species loss, says Nirmal Ghosh

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Climate Change should not become sole focus
 
Perhaps the most powerful message comes not in the form of an apocalypse, but something far smaller and simpler – but one has to notice it.   
  
In this case, the message could be in the little Passer domesticus - the cheeky, chirpy house sparrow.  
  
The bird the vast majority of people on this planet have grown up seeing and taking for granted in our fields and villages and cities, is now vanishing.  
  
Across the world there has been a precipitous drop in the population of the little birds.  
In August 2002, the house sparrow was added to the IUCN's Red Data list of bird species of conservation concern because numbers were estimated to have fallen by 50 per cent in just 25 years.  
  
In Punjab – ironicallly the ''granary'' of northern India – the bird is thought to be sliding towards local extinctioon. In England, research has shown that the house sparrow population has declined by around 65 per cent since the 1970s.  
  
Causes could be varied, from predation by domestic and feral cats in England, to pesticides in the Punjab, or to a change in the food mix of the sparrow in both places. But the causes are certainly driven by human actions on the fragile biosphere.  
  
Whatever is decided - or not - at climate change talks at Copenhagen this month, it will make little or no immediate difference to an array of pressing environmental problems that we will still have to live with and manage, from the toxic mix which is killing house sparrows, to the chainsaws and bulldozers that are destroying rainforest and peat swamps to convert them to oil palm plantations, to the rivers that are loaded with chemicals and heavy metals.  
  
''While climate change is natural, the hype over it is totally political'' maintains Dr Arun D Ahluwalia, director of the Centre of Advanced Studies in Geology at Punjab University, Chandigarh. 
  
''This din over climate change diverts our attention from pollution, the biggest man-made disaster'' says Dr Ahluwalia.   
  
In fact the intense focus on greenhouse gases and global warming, risks diverting much needed resources and attention away from local and perennial - and individually and collectively dangerous - environmental problems, most of which are driven not by climate change, but by people.  
  
Millions of people for instance, unknowingly support the destruction of Indonesia's  rainforests to make way for palm oil.  
  
Friends of the Earth in its 2005 report titled ''The Oil for Apes Scandal'' said one in 10 leading supermarket products in the UK contained palm oil. They include the popular KitKat chocolate. 
  
The UK daily The Independent in a more recent study, concluded that palm oil was ''confirmed or suspected in 43 of Britain's 100 bestselling grocery brands.''  

''If you strip out drinks, pet food and household goods, the picture is starker still: 32 out of 62 of Britain's top foods contain this tree-felling, wildlife-wrecking ingredient'' the daily reported.  
  
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's scenarios for climate change and global warming be accurate – or may not. Some scientistss even think the point is moot.  
  
Many academics like Dr Ahluwalia from evolutionary disciplines – like geology or evolutionary bioloogy – tend to take the long view and believe that even if global wwarming is occurring, it is natural and there is little people can do about it.  
  
What really matters is not computer projections but the hard evidence of what is happening now – and that evidence is grim.  
  
Long before the IPCC appeared on the scene, for instance, the scientific consensus was that human activity is driving many species to extinction well before their time.  
  
Human health is suffering from the pollutions we dump into the environment. Since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on reduction of greenhouse gases, a continent-sized island of plastic waste has been discovered in the Pacific Ocean, and the Asian brown cloud of particulate pollution from heavy industry, households and automobiles, has been detected over the Indian Ocean.  
  
In his studies in Taiwan's oldest national park, Kenting in southern Taiwan, professor G. Agoramoorthy, who lectures on environmental sciences at Taiwan's Tajen University, found even the apparently pristine ecosystem loaded with heavy metals.  

He found the same heavy metals in the mangrove fringes of the east coast of his native south India.  

In his 2005 book ''No Turning Back'' Richard Ellis, author of ''The Empty Ocean'' wrote ''We began modestly - and recently – killing off many large animals for food or sellf-defense. But in recent years we have ratcheted up the rate; we are now mowing down entire species with terrible and reckless abandon. In many instances, we do not directly target the particular species, but if we poison or destroy the habitat in which it lives, the result is the same.'' 
  
Reducing carbon emissions is not a silver bullet. Whatever happens at Copenhagen, severe environmental problems will still be with us. We still need to save orangutans and tigers and whales and rare life forms we have not even discovered yet, but which are disappearing en masse. And we still have to ensure our children have a better life, and we leave a planet for them which is in healthy shape.  

(A version of this article first appeared in The Straits Times, Dec 3, 2009)