A lot has been said on climate change and its environmental implications. But not enough cases are being made to highlight that climate change is more than just an environmental problem, it is a human problem and moreover a strategic one especially for countries like Indonesia.
It is critical to frame the issue of climate change as a problem for the population. It should not be seen only as a problem for the environment, since it also poses grave challenges to social and economic development.
Planet Earth has been in existence for more than four billion years and has gone through solar storms, meteor impacts and several ice ages.
Several dozens of high-grade hurricanes and meters of rising sea level will not jeopardize the planet as much as it will demolish the people living on it. (By Michael C. Putrawenas, Copenhagen)
Your comments:
Michael C. Putrawenas has highlighted the effects of climate change in Indonesia and requested a strategic long-term approach to cope with the effects as rising sea levels and food production for the long term.
This is of course worth applause. However, it seems that Michael is also a victim of the carbon effect masses, which blames the human-generated output of CO2 emissions as the main reason that our climate is changing.
He maybe has forgotten that prior to the Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change a group of 141 world-famous scientists sent to the UN an extensive list of critical questions regarding this issue on whether human activity is the worst cause of climate change.
Scientifically nothing is further from the truth, as our planet has since its creation undergone dramatic climate changes, as Ice Ages, floods, current deserts that were once rich woods and jungles.
The earth itself is responsible for the current and past CO2 emissions, which makes our rainforests grow, in order to produce oxygen, so we can live. Clean seas, rivers and oceans produce CO2,
in the air so flora and fauna can grow healthy.
However the greatest factor for climate change is our sun, which emits sun flares activity that determinate changes in climate, as well as cosmic radiation, we have not yet mastered the knowledge of its effects on earth.
The message to the Indonesian Government and in Copenhagen should be: Please preserve the existing rainforests and keep the rivers and seas and oceans clean at all costs. Without them, life on this planet will surely cease to exist.
Jan R. Scheele
Bogor, West Java
