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Why we need a cold slap in the face (from The Straits Times) As I write this on a late Bangkok evening, the temperature has dropped to a pleasant 24 deg C, and a cool wind drifts in through my open window. Yet I can still hear the hum of air-conditioners in the building, and I wonder if we will ever learn. Beyond Copenhagen, the larger question is whether we as a species can grasp the enormity of climate change. And if we can, how quickly can we respond to both take the edge off it and adapt to it? How soon will it be too late to respond? We have had at least 17 years to prepare for this. And yet going into Copenhagen, we have scarcely progressed beyond the intentions expressed at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The greatest minds have been warning of the despoliation of the Earth - and the thin membrane of gases that surround it - for decades. Despite that, the years since Rio have been marked by denial, obfuscation, incompetence, greed, waste, camouflage and irresponsibility of staggering proportions. The Kyoto Protocol of Dec 11, 1997 was merely a tap on the brakes. Since then, carbon dioxide emissions have gone up 40 per cent. A storm of controversy has followed the recent exposure of e-mail messages implying that data was massaged by some scientists to support the idea of human-induced global warming. Climate change is the new dogma, the sceptics complain. Many scientists believe the Earth is entering a warming phase anyway - as it has periodically done before. Some say human activity has nothing or very little to do with it. But even if the climate change argument is false, if Copenhagen can jerk us out of business-as-usual complacency, it will have served some purpose. Recently, Dr Johan Rockstroem of the Stockholm Resilience Centre led a study that suggested that there are 'planetary boundaries' that would be bad for our species to cross. The team identified nine boundaries. We have already 'transgressed' three: nitrogen, loss of biodiversity and climate change. 'We are in a danger zone on these three,' Dr Rockstroem said. The sorry state of our planet is the result of a consumption-based, 'more is better' economic model that relies on squeezing more and more out of the Earth's finite resources. We are locked into a demand-driven supply chain of our own creation, and rather than step out of the web, we are tinkering with its edges. Certainly, climate change cuts across all issues, and will affect the very basis of life itself. Are we as a species up to the challenge? Can our institutions - political, economic and administrative systems - change radically, and fast enough? More specifically, will those inside the plenary chamber of the Bella Centre at Copenhagen be up to it? So far the signs are negative. 'We do not seem to have the slightest understanding of the seriousness of our plight,' wrote the eminent scientist Dr James Lovelock in his 2008 book The Vanishing Face Of Gaia: A Final Warning. Dr Lovelock's theory is that the Earth itself is a living, self-regulating organism, which he calls Gaia. 'As we hold our meetings and talk of stewardship, Gaia still moves step by step towards the hot state...where few of us will be alive to meet and talk,' he wrote. � There are now some signs of panic, which is what we need to spur us to slam on the brakes and change our economic system and lifestyles. China has offered significant carbon dioxide cuts. More money was placed on the table by rich countries at the recent Commonwealth Summit. But it is still not enough. There are hidden catches. Carbon 'cap and trade' is sleight-of-hand, enabling industry to carry on with business as usual. Economic models are still based on increasingly discredited conventional measures of gross domestic product. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's James Hansen wrote recently that it was possible to avert the climate crisis 'if we give politicians a cold, hard slap in the face'. He said: 'The fraudulence of the Copenhagen approach - 'goals' for emission reductions, 'offsets' that render ironclad goals almost meaningless, the ineffectual 'cap and trade' mechanism - must be exposed. We must rebel against such politics as usual.' The 10 days in Copenhagen - with at least 100 world leaders in attendance - will show whether we are capable of breaking out of the box. One can only hope that the changes, when they do come, will not be too few and too late.
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