A New Consciousness About Global Warming
Zoë Macintosh
Issue date: 2/7/08 Section: News
Early-rising students received a cold shower of dire reality at the keynote speech of Focus the Nation, the student-organized day of educational and collaborative talks on global warming on Thursday, Jan. 31 in Weinstein Auditorium.
Michael Klare, Five College professor of peace & world security studies gave his speech titled "Global Warming: the Human Dimension". The lecture outlined how and why global warming should be considered an urgent issue of national security, instead of an environmental concern.
"As far as I'm concerned, the work of working group one is finished," Klare said, citing the physical science basis of the fourth assessment report released by the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last April, considered to be the world's authority synthesis of climate change data. "We must continue monitoring, but it should never be necessary again to marshal this kind of evidence," said Klare.
Promising that global climate change posed the same or more life-threatening impact as nuclear warfare, Klare declared the highest priority to be the prevention of these severest possibilities. His statements reflected the concerns of working group two of the IPCC's report, "Impacts Adaptations and Vulnerability."
Citing this document as the source of his analysis, Klare described how climate change would impact specific human communities. He asserted that those already at risk would suffer the most. The first and the hardest hit would be Saharan Africa, and coastal areas experiencing fierce hurricanes and typhoons. Major climate change consequences would occur in the upper latitudes, with changes in temperature in range of 2.5? C. Temperature changes would lead to diminished crop productivity, increased hunger and flooding in prominent river deltas. Destroyed ecosystems would lead to huge migrations in a phenomenon Klare did not hesitate to liken to a world-wide and thousand-fold version of Katrina.
Such massive dislocation and scarcity of resources would spawn further conflicts, and now the talk began to spill into a discussion of human force. For who would absorb the burden of these displaced populations?
Michael Klare, Five College professor of peace & world security studies gave his speech titled "Global Warming: the Human Dimension". The lecture outlined how and why global warming should be considered an urgent issue of national security, instead of an environmental concern.
"As far as I'm concerned, the work of working group one is finished," Klare said, citing the physical science basis of the fourth assessment report released by the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last April, considered to be the world's authority synthesis of climate change data. "We must continue monitoring, but it should never be necessary again to marshal this kind of evidence," said Klare.
Promising that global climate change posed the same or more life-threatening impact as nuclear warfare, Klare declared the highest priority to be the prevention of these severest possibilities. His statements reflected the concerns of working group two of the IPCC's report, "Impacts Adaptations and Vulnerability."
Citing this document as the source of his analysis, Klare described how climate change would impact specific human communities. He asserted that those already at risk would suffer the most. The first and the hardest hit would be Saharan Africa, and coastal areas experiencing fierce hurricanes and typhoons. Major climate change consequences would occur in the upper latitudes, with changes in temperature in range of 2.5? C. Temperature changes would lead to diminished crop productivity, increased hunger and flooding in prominent river deltas. Destroyed ecosystems would lead to huge migrations in a phenomenon Klare did not hesitate to liken to a world-wide and thousand-fold version of Katrina.
Such massive dislocation and scarcity of resources would spawn further conflicts, and now the talk began to spill into a discussion of human force. For who would absorb the burden of these displaced populations?
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