‘Never lose hope,’ climate change expert says
Global carbon emissions up 60% since 1990
VANCOUVER — Tom Pedersen sounds almost upbeat about climate change, putting a positive spin on the decidedly gloomy subject.
“You must never lose hope,” says Pedersen, executive director of the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions at the University of Victoria in B.C., who foresees a “brighter, smarter” future for the planet.
There is no question the world is facing enormous threats, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations group, made clear again this week.
“If the world doesn’t do anything about mitigating the emissions of greenhouse gases and the extent of climate change continues to increase, then the very social stability of human systems could be at stake,” IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri said as the report was released.
Pedersen, unlike some of his colleagues, is confident society will come to its senses.
He does concede it’s a challenge, as climate change is not so much a scientific problem as a social one.
Scientists have done their job — laying out the evidence in a series of IPCC reports that governments around the world, including Canada’s, have signed off on — but society has yet to heed the message.
Global carbon emissions are up almost 60 per cent from the level in 1990, when the IPCC issued its first dire warnings. And global emissions are on track to exceed levels that could displace millions of people in coming decades as ice melts, oceans rise, and droughts and heat waves worsen.
“The issue is not a lack of scientific evidence, the issue is the unwillingness of people and governments to act,” says University of Victoria oceanographer Ken Denman, a former federal scientist who was a lead author on previous IPCC reports.
“It seems to defy logic,” Denman said in an interview Tuesday.
“But a lot of addictions defy logic,” he said, suggesting that is the root of the problem. “Our society is completely addicted to cheap power.”
The insidious nature of climate change doesn’t help. The emissions and their impact are not obvious when you hop on a plane to Hawaii, buy a gas-guzzling truck, or poorly insulate a house.
Such seemingly harmless activities — “especially what we have gotten used to in the wealthy West,” says Pedersen — do collectively harm the planet. But the damage is hard to see because it is so incremental. Apathy and what Pedersen calls “deflection” also come into play, with people thinking that what they might do to reduce emissions will be too insignificant to make a difference.
The Harper government is routinely criticized for not doing enough to reduce carbon emissions, but it is Canadian voters who have the real power.
Denman says time is fast running out, with 10 to 15 years left to rein in global carbon emissions to avert the worst impacts. He implores people to think about the kind of world being left to their children and grandchildren. “And what can we do to ensure that they have the kind of life you think they deserve,” he says.