FACED with the threat of the millennium bug crashing the world鈥檚 computers,
some people bought blankets and hurricane lamps and headed for the hills. Others
paid software engineers to fix the bug.
Yet when 1999 turned to 2000, no aircraft fell from the skies, no governments
collapsed and no missiles inadvertently triggered a nuclear holocaust. As
New 杏吧原创 went to press, it looked as though the survivalists had
overreacted badly
(see p 4).
Sometimes technical fixes work.
For a real millennial disaster, however, computer glitches cannot hold a
candle to global warming.
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For the past decade at least, New 杏吧原创has highlighted the
impending horrors of climate change, but we hope that the temporal vantage point
of a new millennium will give the message added urgency. We need action now.
In the past half century, humanity has inadvertently interfered with the
Earth鈥檚 carbon cycle. We now have a hand on the planet鈥檚 thermostat.
So long as we continue to burn fossil fuels, the thermostat will stay fixed
on 鈥渉otter鈥�, and we can expect more extreme weather, agricultural and ecological
upheaval and changing patterns of human disease. What鈥檚 more, the carbon we pour
into the air this year will mostly still be there in a hundred years. The
warming it causes could still be raising sea levels and flooding Pacific islands
a thousand years from now.
The turn of this millennium is more than a symbolic moment to consider this.
For we appear to be at the crest of the industrialising and demographic waves
that are transforming the world鈥檚 climate. We may also be seeing the start of
the solution.
Historically, 80 per cent of global warming has stemmed from industrialised
nations, which are rich enough and technologically savvy enough to begin cutting
their carbon emissions. But future warming will also depend on the increasing
number of nations that are racing into the industrial age.
Somewhere along the path to Western-style development, all countries
reach a peak of inefficiency in their use of fuel. Initially, cheap labour and
resources, an indifference to pollution and sheer desperation to develop
cause a surge in fuel use. Yet beyond a certain point, smog, shortage of
resources and improved technology make for better fuel efficiency.
The best news is that, thanks to heightened environmental concern, this cusp
seems to be coming ever earlier in the development cycle. Take China. In 1998,
its economy grew by 7.2 per cent but its emissions of carbon dioxide dropped by
3.7 per cent. And the technological options for developing along a cleaner, more
efficient path are more diverse and tempting for rich and poor nations alike.
Today, the blades of wind turbines turn on the plains of India as well as above
the sea off Denmark. Solar panels grace the landscape of Kenya as well as that
of Australia.
Optimists believe we can get these technical fixes in place in time to rein
in global warming. They see us on the verge of a world where oil companies take
over the solar revolution and cars run on fuel cells, where poor governments
embrace the energy technologies of the 21st century and the richest nations
finally learn that economic and environmental efficiency go hand in hand.
Pessimists see the barriers. They predict that low prices will keep the world
in thrall to fossil fuels, while renewables will stay hamstrung by high start-up
costs.
They argue that while oil companies may spend their loose change on solar
panels, they spend the big bucks on prospecting for oil in the rainforests of
Latin America and the Atlantic depths.
We think it鈥檚 worth noting that these barriers are economic and
political鈥攏ot technological. Remember how, in the past 40 years, other
environmental problems have been solved. Londoners, for example, barely remember
the killer smogs of half a century ago.
People can be very dismissive of technological success. This week, some are
complaining about the vast sums that were spent on rooting out the millennium
bug. They argue that since the computer meltdown never happened, the whole thing
must have been a hoax. Silly them. The best thing that could happen to global
warming is that in centuries hence people will treat it with that same sort of
disbelief.
Success is far from guaranteed, but the chains that once bound economic
development and pollution are being loosened. If we fail, it won鈥檛 be for the
want of a technical fix.
