TALKING about the weather has become more urgent as the cold of November sets in. With snow and -20 C temperatures, it’s worth worrying about road conditions and starting vehicles.
Judging from reports released this November, there’s a lot more than today’s temperature to worry about. The United Nations’ International Panel on Climate Change presented an alarming report on the current state of our global weather.
The rise in global temperature by more than two degrees C since 2000 is already having serious consequences. The report details the melting of the ice caps and glaciers, rising sea levels that threaten to wipe out island nations and coastal communities, and severe droughts in semi-arid food growing regions of the world.
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Facing the cold of a prairie winter, it is tempting to think that a few degrees warmer might be rather nice. Couldn’t we use a bit of global warming here?
There has even been some optimistic speculation that, as it gets hotter and drier in the southern parts of this region, farming will adapt and move further north.
But crops don’t need just good weather to thrive. They also need good soils. Much of the northern shield is rocky with too little topsoil for farming. And it takes many millennia to build soil.
Rapid climate change won’t wait for that natural adaptation.
A second report released this November is blunt about the real experience of climate change. Oxfam’s Climate Alarm report notes that natural disasters have quadrupled over the last two decades, from an average of 120 a year in the early 1980s to as many as 500 today. Global warming should really be renamed global storming.
This year has been one of climatic crises. They included Africa’s worst floods in three decades and unprecedented flooding in Mexico and South Asia. There has been a six-fold increase in flooding since 1980.
Then there were the heat waves and forest fires in Europe, Australia and California. And note that only the large-scale disasters hit the headlines. We don’t hear about the many small- and medium-scale disasters resulting from climate change.
The weather crises are also humanitarian crises. Oxfam reports: “The number of people affected by all disasters has risen from an average of 174 million a year between 1985 and 1994 to 254 million a year between 1995 and 2004.”
Those who suffer most in these disasters are mostly those who have the fewest resources. Climate change is punishing the very people who are most vulnerable and least responsible for causing greenhouse gas emissions.
Canadians are on the short list for highest per capita emitters in the world. With the mounting data on the suffering and destruction caused by human induced climate change, it is surely time to cease quibbling about economic advantage.
Canada must quit stalling and get to work on meeting serious reduction targets. Justice and compassion demand no less.
Nettie Wiebe is a farmer in the Delisle, Sask., region and a professor of Church and Society at St. Andrews College in Saskatoon.
