Q&A: 'Old Rich' Countries Owe Debt for Climate Crisis

• Chryso D'Angelo interviews GWYNNE DYER, author of 'Climate Wars' (new york)
• Monday, May 17, 2010
• Inter Press Service

His new book 'Climate Wars: The Fight for Survival as the World Overheats' explores the calamity that escalating temperatures will cause to the world's food supply, healthcare systems, militaries, and migration patterns.

'Africa takes the biggest hits in the region,' Dyer told IPS, adding that it could lose half of its food production over the next 25 years.

Dyer's theory, based on interviews with world-renowned scientists, paints a grim picture of starvation, pandemics, and full-out war if carbon and greenhouse gas emissions are not halted.

'A few degrees make a big difference,' he told IPS. 'Think of that difference as having a fever versus not having a fever. A few degrees hotter could be deadly to your body.'

In an interview with IPS correspondent Chryso D'Angelo, Dyer spoke about the threats of climate change that will reshape planet Earth. Excerpts follow.

Q: Much of 'Climate Wars' emphasises food scarcity. How will failed crops affect developing countries? A: Two regions are affected in terms of food supply - the tropics and the subtropics. In the tropics (the Amazon, Burma, Northern Borneo, Philippines, Congo and Nigeria, among others), it rains a lot. Climate change will not bring a lack of water, but it will get hotter.

Major food crops (rice, wheat, corn), which are not native to that area, will fail if the temperature rises two to three degrees above 35 C for even a few hours during their critical three-week growing period. Native crops - yams, sweet potatoes and sorghum - might survive, but they don't feed as many people.

Q: What will happen to food crops in the subtropics? A: These big grain-growing areas (including parts of Central America, Mexico, North Africa, the Mediterranean, the Middle East, China, the U.S. Australia, and Argentina, among others) are semi-deserts right now. Take away the water and the soil will be too dry to cultivate.

Q: Won't melting glaciers compensate for the water loss? A: The glaciers will take at least 100 years to melt.

Q: In your book, you discuss how starving people will migrate to other countries. A: You can already see it happening. A quarter of the population in Zimbabwe has migrated to South Africa due to food shortage. There are riots because they are seen as taking jobs from South Africans. What happens when all of these countries send people elsewhere to feed themselves? The answer is countries slam their borders shut as a survival mechanism.

Q: How will climate change hamper health care? A: New diseases generally come out of the tropics and the sub-tropics, where peasant societies live with their animals. Food shortage will lead to failed states. Where there is no government, there is no health infrastructure, with no healthcare system to pick up on the early warning signs of a brewing pandemic. If a disease spreads, it can get into the population in a big way and be unstoppable before you know its name.

Q: Are any countries safe from the effects? A: The countries a long way from the Equator, like the northern United States, Canada, and Russia, will fare better.

Q: What's your opinion on the outcome of the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Copenhagen, Denmark? A: That was a train wreck - 192 countries were there, but that's not a useful bargaining unit. You have to choose 20 countries that have most of the food, most of the consumption, have them make a deal and have other countries hop on board.

Q: Which countries should lead? A: The 'old rich' countries (U.S., Russia, France, Britain, Germany, Canada, Japan) and the newly developing, but fast developing countries (China, India, Brazil). But they are at loggerheads at how to share the burden. Eighty percent of the human-sourced carbon dioxide, which is causing the problem, was put there by the 'old rich' countries. So you have the rich countries saying, 'You have to curb your emission because we're at the brink' and the developing countries are saying, 'Well, who drove us there?'

Q: What's the solution? A: The 'old rich' must break emissions and help the rapidly developing countries grow their energy production with clean energy, like wind farms and solar panels, not coal-fired plants. It's the debt we owe for what we did...but we didn't mean any harm.

Q: How are the 'old rich' countries moving toward a solution? A: In Copenhagen, the Europeans offered to cut 20 percent of emissions over the next 20 years and said if the developing world is willing to do this, they'll go to 30 percent. The United States offered four percent and that's as far as President Barack Obama could take it. He cannot, in the current political environment with the negative economy and so many years under George Bush, alienate everyone in Congress.

If he fights to get a big climate change bill through, he's going to lose. It would be political suicide. Plus, Americans don't want to hear they have to subsidise clean energy in China and cut their own emissions. In much more of the world, the governments are more frank with people, but they aren't going to get punished for being frank.

© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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