Should we be worried?

Posted on | May 22, 2012 | 370No Commentshttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.pacificrimbiodiesel.com%2F%3Fp%3D370Should+we+be+worried%3F2012-05-22+19%3A41%3A48adminhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.pacificrimbiodiesel.com%2F%3Fp%3D370

I have not posted much over the past 6 months simply because of the workload on Pacific Rim BioEnergy (http://www.pacificrimbioenergy.com), but it seems that our political leaders here in Canada and around the globe have come to that critical junction with our climate and it would seem that they are electing to maintain business as usual. Why is this of concern? Let me offer two posts which will put it in context. Both this post and the next post were segments of a story written by Kelly Rigg at the Huffington Post.

When the chief economist for the International Energy Agency (IEA) issues a dire warning, you’d think the world’s leaders would sit up and take notice. If this statement by Fatih Birol last week wasn’t a dire warning, then I don’t know what is: “What I see now with existing investments for plants under construction… we are seeing the door for a 2 degree Celsius target about to be closed and closed forever.”

A global rise in temperature of 2°C is widely considered to be a threshold beyond which catastrophic climate change is likely to occur; many scientists and governments consider 1.5° a safer bet. And we’re talking here about catastrophic with a capital C — for many communities around the world, climate change has already proved catastrophic.

So how did the leaders of the G8 richest countries respond to this warning at their summit in Camp David last week?

By speaking in platitudes, at best: “Different energy sources have different inherent risks and must be developed in a safe, efficient, and environmentally sustainable manner.”

So what does this actually mean? I will follow this post up with hopefully two more posts. The first one will include the second half of the article written by Kelly Rigg, and deals with the issues of why our leaders should have been listening and taking head of this warning by the chief economist for the International Energy Agency (IEA). The second follow up article deals with what Canada’s environmental and sustainable development commissioner, Scott Vaughn has to say on how Canada is looking to meet its environmental targets.

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