I can feel the carbon in the air tonight ...

Climate change is happening, there is no doubt about it, yes it seems to be the hot topic these days with many companies going green, my favourite example is Marks and Spencer who have initialized their 'Plan A' (because there is no Plan B) which quite frankly sounds damn scary. The truth is that we've done some serious damage already, the effects we're feeling now are from 30 to 40 years ago, we won't know the effects that our culture of want is having until it is too late. It is true we are not 100% sure what causes the odd weather or the un-seasonal temperatures but then science is hardly ever completely certain about the big picture, the untestable things; i have to admit however, seeing as there appears to be a lack of planets with the same properties as ours, that i'll just follow their advice blindly on this one.

In the recent years the amount we know about global warming has increased vastly, we've found that the greenhouse gases that were despised in the 90's actually help to keep our planet at a perfect temperature for life. We've found that the antarctic ice keeps a perfect record of the amount of carbon in the air, fantastic for us, as we can plot a simple graph to show the changes in the amount of carbon in the air. Yes it is true, the amount of carbon in the atmosphere does naturally fluctuate in waves (between 200 and 220 parts per million) we however are currently at 380 PPM. There is no way that this is a coincidence, we have changed our atmosphere considerably (statistics show that we are adding to this figure at 2 parts per year). The real worry comes when we try to reverse this effect, the longer we leave it the harder it is, until the atmosphere eventually goes into positive feedback and then we are in real trouble, once this occurs the very things that have been absorbing the carbon will die, rotting to produce more carbon and ending all life. The point at which positive feedback will start to occur has been pinpointed to 430PPM, which leaves us 25 years to drastically cut our energy consumption.

I feel there can be no clearer case for cutting carbon than this, and if we happen to be wrong, then so be it, we will have atleast achieved something, not as a nation or as a people, but as a planet, something which can only lead to better.



"I don't have to remind you of the two forces which are currently converging on our lives. The first is that the source of energy that is hardest to replace, more or less impossible to replace, - and I mean, liquid fossil fuels, - that source of energy is now running out. The second is of course that the consequences of the fossil fuel burning that has brought us here today, are now being visited on us. And everything around us, all this that seems so solid, that we took for granted, that we just lived with and expected always to live with, that was seen as non-negotiable, suddenly looks contingent. All this begins to look like a great tottering pile, balanced on a ball - a ball that's about to start rolling down hill."
- George Monbiot (3rd December 2005)

For more information on this please see http://www.bitc.org.uk/document.rm?id=5244