Campaign against Climate Change

Early last year I had a letter published in the Christian Aid newsletter expressing my disappointment that they would not address climate change and that they would write about 'hopes for Africa' without mentioning the devastation which global warming is already bringing to the continent. Nobody could make that criticism today! Earlier this year, Christian Aid published their own excellent report 'The Climate of Poverty':

http://www.christian-aid.org.uk/indepth/605caweek/index.htm

In Aberdeen, we organised a very successful joint public meeting with Christian Aid about their report. Their speaker told the audience that climate change was the most urgent of all poverty issues and that anybody concerned about development had to be serious about cutting our greenhouse gas emissions fast and quickly. They also seem keen to lead by example and to address their own carbon emissions - and not by paying a few pounds in offsets!

The only concern which I have had about The Climate of Poverty is that it quotes Sir David Smith and says we must stabilise CO2 levels (or rather CO2 equivalent) at 550 ppm. This will probably mean 3-4 degrees of warming, by which time the climate and the atmosphere will be anything but stable.

I was thus pleasantly surprised when I saw responses to the Stern report yesterday. Most responses welcomed the Stern report, even though it aims for 550 ppm of CO2 equivalent, which will be a very dangerous level indeed. Christian Aid were one of the few voices to go against this consensus. They said that anything above 450 ppm CO2 equivalent might condemn millions of poor people to death: "If we follow the report’s conclusions, we may avert economic bankruptcy but we will still be teetering on the brink of moral bankruptcy." See:

http://www.christianaid.org.uk/news/media/pressrel/061030p1.htm

Good on them!

Meantime, WWF International welcome the findings of the Stern report and still aim for emissions to peak within 10-15 years. That's 10-15 years of rising emissions, by which time 400 ppm will have been well surpassed (and that's CO2 not the much higher CO2 equivalent).

See: http://www.panda.org/about_wwf/what_we_do/climate_change/index.cfm?uNews...

To their credit, though, they have just issued a paper which warns of the need to stabilise CO2 at 400 ppm. And a WWF UK statement quoted in the Guardian speaks of the need not to go beyond 450 ppm. Hopefully WWF's policy demands (similar to the Stop Climate Chaos manifesto) will now be upgraded in line with those findings.