If you really love the planet, hate the oil

The latest report of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is explicit: If temperatures rise in the range of 1.5 to 2.5 degrees Celsius above what they were in 1999, up to nearly a third of all species on Earth will likely face an increased risk of extinction.

Think of it. One-third of all the different kinds of birds – likely gone. A third of all the various butterflies and wildflowers – gone. Red oak trees might survive, but maybe not the beech; birch trees, but not ash; sugar maples but not the black spruce of the Boreal Forest – which would devastate the Boreal.
To prevent this happening, the IPCC says it will be necessary to stabilize carbon dioxide emissions within the next seven years, and then drive them down 50 to 85 per cent by 2050.

These are staggeringly ambitious targets, but as Rajendra Pachauri, head of the IPCC says, “What we do in the next two or three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.”

Despite setting its sights high, the report stresses repeatedly that the targets can be met. And they can be met at minuscule cost.

By 2050, global domestic product would be altered in the range of a 1 per cent gain to a 5.5 per cent decrease. “This corresponds to slowing average … global GDP growth by less than 0.12 per cent (a year),” the report says.

It notes that the increase in atmospheric CO2 is “primarily due to fossil fuel use, with land-use changes providing another significant but smaller contribution.”

And it highlights the scope of the problem the world faces. By 2030, it says, more than $20 trillion will be invested in energy plants that will have long lifetimes.

To ensure that these plants use low-carbon technologies – which means finding alternatives to coal and oil-fired stations – will require a large shift in investment patterns if energy-related CO2 emissions are to return to 2005 levels by 2030.

If CO2 emissions are not cut back, it’s unlikely that nature or civilization as we know it will have the ability to adapt.

Toronto Star