Top British climate scientist Professor James Lovelock FRS has warned that over 6 billion people will die this century due to unaddressed climate change. Already 16 million people die avoidably in the world each year due to deprivation and deprivation-exacerbated disease (see: “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007). It is already clear from declining agricultural production due to drought and massive storm surge disasters in India, Bangladesh, Burma and the US that global warming is already impacting on global avoidable mortality.

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The World is facing a global food price crisis and looming mass starvation in the Developing World. The price of rice has doubled in 3 months and the price of wheat has doubled in one year. The huge increases in the price of staples such as wheat and rice is being driven by US, UK and EU diversion of food for biofuel; climate change and decreased agricultural productivity due to both inundation and drought; and globalization which means that 4 billion impoverished and under-fed people compete in the market place for those with the money to buy food to drive their cars or for grain-fed meat.

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Up to 350000 newborn seals were estimated to be killed last summer in Canada, and the number is thought to be much bigger this coming summer. In 2005 the 98,5% of the babies killed weren’t even 2-months-old, and autopsies showed proved that most of them were still alive during the extraction of their fur.

If you want to help, don’t wait till summer to hear about these things again on the news. Sign the petitions of www.protectseals.org and stop buying cosmetics or clothes that contain seal fat or fur. Maybe a decrease in the demand on the market will decrease the number of seal murders.

Image credit: Mike Baird. Image licensed under a
Creative-Commons Attribution license.

Lucas Oleniuk, photographer at the Star, has made a video to illustrate climate change from still-images “taken in our own back yard.”

Twenty days in Ontario resulted in twenty thousand still images that make up this beautiful piece called “Airsick: an industrial devolution“.

“Airsick: An Industrial Devolution” is more than just another video. It is a statement, a warning, a wake-up call. And it dovetails perfectly with the Star’s commitment to Earth Hour, a global action slated for March 29 - when people in cities around the world will turn out their lights for an hour to take a stand against climate change. (The Earth Hour organization calls our changing weather patterns “the greatest threat our planet has ever faced.”)

Watch “Airsick: an industrial devolution“, and read more about it over at the Star.

The European market for carbon dioxide emissions rights increased with 30% during January and September last year. Currently one ton of carbon dioxide emissions rights will cost you €24 (about $35).

The price for the same ton of emission rights during the period of 2005 and 2007 is currently €1 (about $1,46). This is due to the fact that the European Union has, as planned, lowered the number of emissions rights, and thus the demands on the market have increased the price for the emission rights.

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This is the final part of Climate Emergency and Sustainability Emergency, a two part article.

A few days ago at a social function I was asked by a top US atmosphere scientist - in Australia to work with top Australian atmospheric scientists - what would I do NOW. My answer in short was as follows: Australia has 50 Gigawatt (50 billion watt) electricity generating capacity (85% fossil fuel-driven at present); it currently spends about A$10 billion pa on fossil fuel subsidies; the installation cost for large-scale wind farms is about A$2 per watt of installed capacity; simply diverting this unconscionable fossil fuel subsidy to wind farm installation would yield A$10 billion pa /A$2 per watt = 5 billion watt capacity pa = 50 billion watt (50 Gigawatt) wind power electricity capacity in a mere 10 years, i.e. by 2017.

As detailed below, stated and committed Rudd Government policy means that it will INCREASE Australia’s fossil annual fuel-derived per capita CO2 pollution (already over 10 times higher than the world average if you include our fossil fuel exports) by about 50% by 2050. Every year is important. We must act urgently NOW. “Waiting for Godot” or, with the utmost respect, “waiting for Garnaut” is not an option.

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“Climate Emergency and Sustainability Emergency” - Submission from Dr Gideon Polya to the Garnaut Climate Change Review Garnaut Climate Change Review, Level 2, 1 Treasury Place, Melbourne, VIC 3002

This submission by a senior scientist is in response to a general invitation for submissions made on the Garnaut Climate Change Review Website.

This is part one of two parts. You can find part two here.

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While the USA, Canada and Japan are doing their best to wreck the climate conference in Bali scientists from the UK’s Hadley Centre and University of East Anglia has concluded that this year (2007) has been one of the warmest since 1850.

“However, since the end of April, the La Nina event has taken some of the heat out of what could have been an even warmer year”, Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (UEA), said. So even that La Nina has been around this year with it’s cooling effects the temperatures have kept rising.

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