The issue of climate change - why is action so sluggish?

This blog assignment is about a very vital issue: climate change. However, I disagree with Ms Tåqvist that this issue would be just a ‘trend’. Actually, the scientific community was well aware of the issue in the eighties and the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has reportedly expressed concerns about the issue. Already in the nineties, this was the big environmental issue.

There are really good reasons for it to be. In many ways it is the most complex environmental issue humanity has ever faced. This is due to the fact that almost every activity causes emissions of gases (especially CO2) that have the potential of changing the climate. Other environmental problems were - in a way or another – easier dealt with since all of society was not affected. Moreover, the principle of substitution was much more applicable. For example, the toxic and bioaccumulating polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were used in many different applications especially from the fifties through much of the seventies. However, it was possible to replace these compounds with less harmful chemicals. The same principle applies to the CFCs that were a major reason behind the ozone hole. It was possible to forbid, i.e. phase out, these chemicals. With CO2, the situation is totally different. CO2 is non-toxic in it self (it is added to water to make soft drinks). No one could ever forbid the gas itself; it is exhaled by all animals every time they breathe, and captured by all plants and algae in photosynthesis creating the foundation for the food chain.

However, something must be done about the use of fossil fuels that cause the atmospheric CO2 content to rise steadily since this could make too much of a good thing – increase the temperature on Earth with a concomitant sea level rise. It should be remembered, however, that without the natural greenhouse effect the mean temperature on Earth would be about 30 ° C lower than what it is today.

It is easy to state that people have been slow in realising the issue of climate change. Furthermore, there is certainly a difference between being aware of climate change and truly realising the palpable consequences and what one can do oneself to reduce ones emissions of greenhouse gases. From this, another crucial step is required to actually do something. Most people are yet stuck in the first phase (or globally perhaps not even that). Meanwhile people’s ordinary lives go on, using buses, cars, buying things from all over world, eating meat and so on. What comes tomorrow (or later this day) feels more essential than what happens perhaps several decades away. This readily explains why it is not passable to rely on the general public to solve the huge climate issue.

Moreover, politicians intermittently encourage consumption of goods and services, thus encouraging further emissions. Sometimes feelings become involved, as when the Swedish minister for Agriculture rhetorically asked about taking away meatballs from children, upon commenting the methane emissions caused by the meat industry.

To tackle the emission of greenhouse gases, bold political decisions are needed. However, this is certainly not easily done, since many nations tend to give short term economic growth greater significance than much more vital long-term environmental issues. Decisions are definitely needed to make it economically unfavourable to emit CO2, methane and other green house gases. First with that measure, people start changing behaviour. Economy rules, also in our everyday lives. For example, when the petroleum price was lowered this year, the consumption of ethanol by ‘green drivers’ plummeted. Thus hard economic stimuli are called for. Only this could reduce emissions and hence preserve a climate not too different from today.