Copenhagen Day 2
I spent the morning at the Cultural Futures side-event conference (www.culturefutures.org). The aim “is an expanding positive spiral of engagement of cultural actors around the world who are moved to engage their work and creativity to sustain human and all life”.
I learnt about the World Views project (www.wwviews.org) that was a citizen consultation on climate change run in 44 countries with about 100 people simultaneously participating in each country! An impressive feat. World Views argues (which I agree) there won’t be behaviour change towards sustainability without ownership and that people want to be involved in the decisions affecting their lives not simply told what to do.
We met 10 Youth Leaders attending the COP who shared with us what they have been up to in their respective countries – of them there was an impressive young woman from South Africa who was very inspiring in her commitment to environmental change. She was drawing on the rich cultural traditions of music and dance to bring people together to create a shared hope for environmental protection.
Later that day I went back to the hub of the climate talks, the Bella Center, where I sat in on a panel discussion held by the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to refresh our minds about the scientific evidence of climate change from the 4th Assessment Report and to tell us about the 5th Assessment not due out until 2013!
From the 4th Assessment there is unequivocal evidence there is a warming of the Earth’s climate system and this is very likely due to GHG emissions from human activity. The current concentration of carbon-dioxide emissions in the Earth’s atmosphere is 387 ppm, which is a ~third higher than has been experienced in the last several 100,000 years. There is a vast array of observed climate change impacts that have been gathered through the IPCC process from water scarcity to changes in reproduction patterns of plants and animals (e.g. Spring coming early).
The 5th Assessment will be investigating the scientific knowledge on geo-engineering solutions – these are proposals, such as putting sulphur particles in the atmosphere, to reduce the global temperature. There are many serious consequences of geo-engineering solutions that need to be understood before any one of them can be considered as a viable climate solution. I have heard a meeting will take place in the coming months to develop a legal agreement to prevent a single country from unilaterally implementing a geo-engineering solution. This is incredibly important given the global consequences this action would have.
Dr. Pachauri, Chairman of the IPCC, addressed the recent controversy over emails stolen from climate scientists at the University of East Anglia (UEA) by hackers – referred to in the media as Climategate. Dr. Pachauri said the IPCC would not be undertaking a formal investigation of the UEA scientists. He said they have looked into the issue and are satisfied that there is nothing in the contents of these emails that undermines either the high degree of confidence in the climate science or robustness of the IPCC procedures for reviewing the science that feeds into its assessment reports. UEA is holding a formal investigation while police conduct an investigation into the hacking.
