The article quoted former top Nasa climate scientist James Hansen’s concern about accelerated change.
Scientists have been warning for two centuries, since the first, Frenchman Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier, identified the Greenhouse effect in 1824. Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius confirmed it in 1896. British scientist Guy Callendar’s 1938 studies proved the planet had warmed. Dave Keeling created a method to measure atmospheric carbon dioxide still used today.
Humans have had 200 years of scientific climate change warnings and routinely ignored them. In March last year, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres again alerted us that because of increasing greenhouse emissions, the planet is “nearing the point of no return”. And what difference did that make?
Last month I wrote about a 1989 Time magazine article based on rapid climate change titled Endangered Earth Gloom and Doom. I have just picked up a 1992 Listener article “Last Chance for Planet Earth”: how we share the collapse of clean air, water and biodiversity requirements for mutual existence.
Here, I’ve used Dave Lowe’s The Alarmist Fifty Years Measuring Climate Change on Heeding Disaster Warnings, as well as Bill McGuire’s Hothouse Earth book with a title speaking for itself. Add to that the countless messages and warnings I have relayed through these pages.
I was very disappointed that despite the NZ Labour Government joining the groundswell in declaring a climate emergency and 3/4 of our country’s regions doing the same, our vulnerable district reneged.
But all is not lost. I repeat my comment to your article last week, GDC sets up Citizen Assembly for cyclone recovery and climate action: “What better way is there to admit our district faces the Climate Emergency our previous GDC team declined to declare? Now that Tairāwhiti admits we are at high risk of danger from climate change, we can open ourselves to ‘community-led decision-making’.”
I have always been aware actions speak louder than words.
Climate change is a global issue; we are all affected. The only chance to make a global difference is for a worldwide effort by them all to reduce GHG emissions promptly.
It is a fact New Zealanders are among the highest per-capita worldwide greenhouse gas emitters ‑ we should do more, not less.
Please, this is an important decision. All future generations depend on how we react now.
Maybe your heading was correct: “Doom is not inevitable.”
