Global Warming In My Mittens!

Global Warming In My Mittens!

Ganga Prasad G. Rao
http://myprofile.cos.com/gangar


I have had this creepy feeling about global warming for a long time. The phenomenon was recognized even in the sixties and received scant attention for decades. Then, when it did, the focus was on identifying impacts and preparing for them, not solving the problem. Which brings up the slimy prospect: what if global warming is beneficial to humans, if only on balance. No one disputes the real impacts on sea level from melting of polar ice and the Greenland icecaps. Or, for that matter, the increase in frequency of anomalous weather events. The former is likely to be slow relative to the pace of human resettlement so that it doesn't pose a problem in most countries. (Crowded islands excepted). The latter is easily anticipated and partially internalized by various calamity and agriculture insurance policies. Changes in diurnal temperature patterns are anyway dwarfed by temperature changes from day to day. An increase in humidity could affect asthmatics, but they have their inhalers. Even the impacts on glacial melt rivers can be anticipated by prudent water resource management policies. Weigh against this the large areas of semi-frigid land that will open up for agriculture (for a longer part of the year, with water aplenty), the boom in stock markets anticipating higher demand for renewable energy technology and air conditioners, the reduction in fuel bills in the temperates and beyond, and the increase in rainfall (and agricultural productivity) and suddenly, at least privately, one is not too sure if all the brouhaha about global warming is worth the squeeze on the purse that would follow if we tried to reverse it! I half suspect there are those countries that have strategically positioned themselves to capture these gains from global warming.

So, humans could possibly emerge happier from global warming, especially if it is tackled with a bit of sensitivity to the poor. Does that mean all is well and we can get back to sipping tea? It all boils down to how much we care for the impacts on the plant world, the animal world and outlines of geographic features on the globe! Do we care about dogs dying in the extreme heat of the summer exacerbated by global warming and air conditioner exhaust? Does it matter that ships and ocean liners fly kites as they sail the 'northern passage'? Do we care about whales and creatures of the sea going haywire figuring out why the sea is getting warm even as it gets polluted? Does it matter that the mango tree flowers in August to yield fruit on the coldest day of January? Would it hurt your enjoyment of the symphony orchestra if the currents in the oceans turned weaker or reversed directions? Or, animals experienced altered behavior patterns and lower sperm count? Would your grandchildren care that the many biological, chemical and physical phenomena taught to us – carbon cycle, acid rain, eutrophication, desertification, migration, diurnal/seasonal phenomena, glacial melting – to name a few would be altered with unpredictable impacts on plants and animals and their interaction with the environment. Does it matter at all to our policy makers that some of these environmental impacts are essentially irreversible? Why do our leaders and strategists negotiate global warming as if it were merely a human problem? The bottom line, if you ask me, is that as much as we care about our longevity and survival, the human race gives a damn about calamitous impacts of its existence on flora, fauna and the environment (at least not until they drop in to the list of endangered species, by which time it is already too late). Our policies to date have been largely anthropocentric. Will we ever regulate for the plants and animals in Noah's ark?

And here's the frightening prospect (just between you and me). At the end of the day (a few decades from now), we may just find comfort in a hotter world in which the tropics are infested not by insects but humans, while the temperates enjoy the bounty conferred by global warming. And 'we' will suffer hotter summers from warming the world with our coal-fired utilities while 'they' profit from selling us more wheat from an expanded cultivation area and lengthened growing season? In other words, what if it is not 'global collusion', but collusion of the developed world against the developing world - a 'You Pollute For Our Second Rainbow' strategy?

Don't scratch your brains out!