Climate change and global warming have now become buzzwords the world over. The disastrous consequences for global climate change is one topic that has now taken very serious dimension but hardly been realised in a serious enough way by the nations across the world.
Climate change effects have noticed frequent catastrophes, such as severe drought, heavy rains cycles, cloudbursts, longer and more extreme heat waves, spread of tropical diseases such as sars and bird flu, damage to vegetation and agricultural systems due to pests, and threats to coastlines and proper due to higher sea levels and strom surges, extreme weather events and prolonged droughts will continue to lead to increased injury, illness and death.
Continued warming temperatures will also increase the number of malaria and dengue fever cases and lead to an increase in other infectious diseases as a result of poor nutrition due to food production disruption.
It threatens to bring more famine and drought, worse pandemics, more natural disasters, more resource scarcity, and human displacement on a staggering scale," Asian and developing countries should take the lead in this regard by moving the UN to pass a resolution to put in place an effective and strong mechanism to urge the countries to curb the production of greenhouse gases and also help the developing ones to find technological solutions to help reduce the production of these gases in the process of industrial development and take steps to effectively control this potentially dangerous development.
Although issue of climate change and global warming are fairly high on the agenda of most governments, but in practice, across nations, there is a wide variation in policy response to the emerging threat. This is not surprising because different countries have different priorities depending on their state of economic progress. Governments, especially in major emerging economies, are forced to strike a balance between domestic compulsions - poverty alleviation, for instance - and policies that help combat climate change.
Obviously, it is a political call that governments take. Responsible and responsive policymaking will surely have to take into account threat perceptions of climate change; but that can hardly qualify to be any country's single point agenda. If any country accept sustainable growth and development as the way forward, it subsumes the climate change issues.
At the same time, no country can ignore the inherent contradiction in the expression "sustainable growth". Growth essentially involves exploiting natural resources for human benefit and countries have to strike a delicate balance between environmental sustainability and economic growth. It is easier said than done. As the climate issue impinges on everyone, wisdom demands that nations sink their petty differences in approach and strategy to stem the danger from spreading further and squeezing the survival prospects of one and all. Principally, the efforts boil down to reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission, caused primarily by accelerated economic development through exploitation of fossil fuels rich in carbon dioxide.
Non-official efforts such as the Clinton Climate Initiative could also be used as a renewed approach. In any case, every country need to adopt new methods and ways of doing things in optimising the use of exhaustible resources, energy and water. corporations/institutions must carry out energy analysis and incorporate environmental accounting practices to reduce green house gas emission levels at their facilities. The government, in turn, could enforce a form of taxation based on companies' contribution to climate change.
As the major emitter of greenhouse gases, it is doubtless the responsibility of the US to initiate steps to arrest the trend of uncontrolled atmospheric pollution. Climate change is today's biggest problem, threatening mankind with extinction. The problem, largely of man's own doing, must be treated as an emergency by all. Two ways to mitigate this problem is to make tree-planting and rain-water harvesting compulsory. Wastage of water, electricity and deforestation should be made criminal offences.
Sunil K. Kumbhat
Jodhpur (rajasthan), India
