Thriving Beyond Sustainability: Pathways to a Resilient Society by Andres R. Edwards

Author:Andres R. Edwards [Edwards, Andres R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: nature, Environmental Conservation & Protection, Business & Economics, Green Business, philosophy, social, Development, Sustainable Development
ISBN: 9781550924503
Google: 6-G3cqPiH18C
Publisher: New Society Publishers
Published: 2010-05-01T23:44:47.345915+00:00

Members of Solar Richmond’s green jobs training program install a photovoltaic system in Richmond, California. Solar Richmond joins local city government and green businesses in creating green-collar jobs for inner-city residents. Such programs provide the skillsets for the green economy.

Climate Change

In 2006, Al Gore’s documentary film An Inconvenient Truth elevated the urgency of the climate change issue and spread awareness of it to a global level. Although a minority of skeptics still doubts the cause and severity of climate change, the debate has largely shifted to how to identify and implement effective policies and strategies for curbing greenhouse gases. These heat-trapping gases, including carbon dioxide, methane and sulfur dioxide, are the result of emissions from our industrial processes, agriculture and deforestation. Events such as storms, floods, droughts, forest fires, melting icecaps and glaciers, sea-level rise and pest infestations indicate that the Earth’s atmospheric temperature is rising at an alarming rate.

Before the start of the Industrial Revolution in the 1750s, the level of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, had been 280 parts per million (ppm) for the previous 10,000 years. After 1750, and especially in the last several decades, CO2 levels have increased. They are now at 387 ppm and continue to grow at an average of 2 ppm every year.33 Scientists are urging that to avoid the effects of climate change CO2 levels must be reduced to 350 ppm. NASA’s chief climatologist James Hansen stated in 2008 that “if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm.”34 The time left to reverse the climate crisis is limited. Nobel Prize winner Rajendra Pachauri says, “If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.”35

Although some steps to curb greenhouse gas emissions have been taken, the severity of the climate crisis calls for a renewed commitment from the entire international community. In 2005 the Kyoto Protocol set binding targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions for 37 industrialized countries and the European Community. The US did not sign the accord. These targets amounted to a five percent reduction below the 1990 level of greenhouse gas emissions for the period 2008-2012.36 A subsequent conference in Bali, Indonesia, designed the Bali Roadmap for future negotiations. These will culminate in December 2009 in the Copenhagen Protocol to limit CO2 emissions. More than any other international gathering, the Copenhagen conference may stand as the pivotal point in the international community’s commitment — or lack thereof — to solving the climate crisis.37

Through 2008, these agreements have not included the United States, China and India, all key contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. With China building an average of one new coal power plant every other week, India rapidly industrializing and the

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