Global Warming - Causes and Effects

Peter's Journal July 2007

This article appears in the July 2007 edition of Episcopal Life magazine.

Everyone is talking about it, magazines are featuring stories about what to do about it, but still much is not being said about global warming and climate change. When we really listen to nature the story becomes more urgent and challenging by the week.

The kittiwakes, skuas, arctic terns, and guillemots, magnificent shore birds that nest in the cliffs of Scotland can no longer feed their young, lamented The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. The warming of the North Sea by 1 degree has forced the bait fish to move north to find colder water. Not a challenge for the human family, because we just build bigger and more far ranging fishing fleets. However, the range of birds is predicated upon evolution and they can not, even if they chose to, coax a few more miles out of their weary wings. No longer able to reach the sand eels the young are not able to be fed and extinction is a very real possibility. Even former Prime Minister Tony Blair weighed in on this story and commented: “a challenge so far reaching in its impact and irreversible in its destructive power that it radically alters human existence.”

Blair, like scientists from the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, realize that one of the effects of global warming and climate change, and perhaps equivalent to our canary in the mine metaphor, is that the most delicate in God’s creation may be warning all of humanity. As we know well the coal miners in West Virginia would take their caged feather friends deep into the shaft to sit as sentinels watching for escaping gas that would threaten the lives of the miners. Sitting on the craggy rocks of Northern Scotland are a few species of birds speaking volumes to the human family. But, this is only the beginning.

Many of the unintended consequences of a rapidly industrializing world dependent on fossil fuels as long witnessed by Peruvian Andes elders, sherpas in the Himalayas, and mountain climbers the world over are just now beginning to be addressed by the lowlanders. Conrad Anker, the world class climber of the highest peaks in the world, and the one who discovered the frozen body of famed climber George Mallory missing since 1924, because of the melting glaciers, has reminded all of us that the top of God’s world is where one notices the changes first. Look to the peaks and then the plains of the Arctic and Antarctica and the real story of climate change becomes readily apparent. Giant cracks in the Arctic sea ice do not bode well for the future of one of the great bears of the earth, the polar bear. The Antarctica has witnessed a 2 degree rise in temperature in just 35 years and now actual snow melt. And the fabled Alps, scientists predict that 80-100% of these majestic glaciers will be gone by 2100.

The sad part of the story is that often those least affected by the changes in the climate landscape are usually the ones most responsible. The developed economies with only 20% of the population still emit nearly 60% of all the fossil fuel carbon dioxide released into the finite atmosphere. American cars and trucks alone consume more than 8 million barrels of oil a day. Even in the face of our culpability in contributing mightily to global warming, increased education and awareness, we are still spewing more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than the previous year. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science was the staggering news that “the annual rate of increase for emissions of the main greenhouse gas in 2004 was 3 percent, triple the 1 percent rate during the 1990’s.” The inconvenient truth is that rapidly expanding economic benefits across the globe are accelerating the warming of the planet. Roughly 700 million gasoline and diesel powered vehicles, including airplanes, consume huge amounts of oxygen which we need to breathe and release carbon which makes us sick. This seemed to be ok until we continued to destroy the carbon sinks, the absorbent sponges God provided through leaves and trees, soil, and phytoplankton in the world’s oceans. Thus, we have over-shot the capacity of the planet to process our human made pollution. Since 1987 we have been living beyond our means.

This is one of many of the root causes of our over-heating the planet. Yet, there are others that have become sacred cows and few voices are addressing the systemic ills that are killing the planet. Population, which continues to grow at an unsustainable rate of approximately 75 million new consumers a year, is the over-arching culprit that few are willing to address head on. Only one man has proposed a sensible number for the planet and that is activist Paul Watson who believes the planet can only sustain roughly one to two billion people, not 6.8 billion, or the projected 9-12 billion in the next 40 years. He is basing his numbers on the caring capacity, not the carrying capacity that most scientists use as their measurement. With 2.5 billion of the worlds people without access to adequate sanitation and 1.1 billion unable to drink fresh clean water an ever increasing population spells doom for future generations. The apocalyptic city of Lagos Nigeria, currently home to 13 million people, and projected to grow to 25 million in 25 years, currently has 0.4 percent of its toilets hooked up to the sewer. Yes, only 52,000 out of 13 million have adequate sanitation in that one city alone. It is clear, there are often too many people for infrastructures unable to expand and upgrade to meet the rapid growth of population. Can we presume to care for 10 billion if we can’t care for half of the human family today?

Another of the primary causes of climate change is deforestation. Forests, both the canopy of the trees and the litter on the ground absorb and store carbon dioxide. Maintaining the ecological integrity of the earth’s forests from the rainforest of the Amazon and the Congo to the Siberian and Canadian boreal forests is crucial to the long term health of the planet. As we have witnessed since Biblical times, the Oaks of Bashan (Jordon), the Cyprus of Israel, and the Cedars of Lebanon are all but gone, and what remains is a desert. Removing the forests at an acre a minute takes more than the lungs of the planet, it takes a huge natural sink for the pollution we create.

We conclude our first look at climate change by listening to another of the most humble among us, the butterfly. England is home to 59 species of butterfly. Early emergence, a sure sign of global warming, tells of the story that many species are breaking from their cocoons up to seven weeks earlier than normal. Once again, a story on the back page, but April 2007 in Britain was the warmest on record since 1659. Once again the rapidity of change makes it impossible for many in God’s realm, God’s fragile Garden of Eden, to adapt fast enough to survive. We, perhaps initially unknowingly are contributing to the collapse of creation as we let species slip through our fingers.

Today is the day to start making the changes personally as we address the systems that erode the quality of life for many in this world. To access information on what you can do to make a difference go to www.global-cool.com. Or visit www.earthtalktoday.tv