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UN: World Has Done A Terrible Job Handling Climate Change, And Now We're Probably Doomed
By
Rebecca Fishbein
Published Jan 17, 2014
Modified Jan 17, 2014
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By
Rebecca Fishbein
Published Jan 17, 2014
Modified Jan 17, 2014
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Sometimes it seems fruitless to continue talking about climate change, because no matter how overwhelming the evidence is that global warming is VERY REAL and VERY TERRIFYING, there are people who continue to point at a lone, floating snowflake and call foul. The prognosis is also increasingly terrifying. But here goes: A new U.N. study says that world governments have so thoroughly failed at cutting back on greenhouse gas emissions that if something drastic isn't done in the next 15 years, the problem will be virtually UNSOLVABLE, unless future generations come up with some pretty heavy duty technological innovations.
The Times obtained a leaked copy of the report, headed by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and due out in April, and there's some terrifying stuff in there. For instance, while some countries claim to have lowered their greenhouse gas emissions, they're really just exporting their emissions by outsourcing manufacturing in unregulated factories in places like China. Naturally, that doesn't do much to solve a global climate change problem, though it does give governmental leaders the opportunity to pat themselves on the back for saving the First World.
It also turns out that the international carbon emission-limiting Kyoto Protocol treaty, which expired in 2012, wasn't "as successful as intended," and though a new international treaty has been proposed to replace it, it's unclear whether it'll get enough support to be effective. The U.S. (which never ratified Kyoto) is unsurprisingly on the fence about the new treaty's limits, and Congress has already proven its interminable ineptitude at rallying support for important causes.
The IPCC report does give us more than a decade to right these environmental wrongs, and if the world commits to investing, say, $147 billion in combating carbon emissions, maybe we've got a shot at redemption.
But the window is shrinking; if the world's nations do not move quickly, even more money will have to be poured into new technology to help fix the havoc humans (yes, humans, I, YOU, WE) have wrought, including, possibly, sucking greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere and burying them. They'll also have to come up with some innovations to help mankind deal with melting glaciers, forest depletions, floodwaters and agricultural catastrophe. Sorry, future generations and most living creatures on earth! China's crap was just too cheap to resist.
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climate change
global warming
ipcc
united nations
Rebecca Fishbein
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