Concern over global warming should not overshadow other crises
Nirmal Ghosh, Straits Times 3 Dec 09;
PERHAPS the most powerful message will come not in the form of an apocalypse, or a bang, but something far smaller and simpler, a whimper - but one has to notice it.
In this case, the message could be the little Passer domesticus - the cheeky, chirpy house sparrow.
The bird the the vast majority of people on this planet have grown up seeing and taking for granted in our fields and villages and cities, is now vanishing. Across the world there has been a precipitous drop in the population of the little birds.
In August 2002, the house sparrow was added to the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of bird species of conservation concern because its numbers were estimated to have fallen by 50 per cent in just 25 years.
In India's Punjab state - ironically the 'granary' of northern India - the bird is thought to be sliding towards local extinction. In England, research has shown that the house sparrow population has declined by around 65 per cent since the 1970s.
The causes of this decline could be various, from predation by domestic and feral cats in England to pesticides in Punjab. Or the cause could be a change in the food mix of the sparrow in both places. Whatever it is, the cause or causes would certainly be driven by human actions on the fragile biosphere.
Whatever is decided - or not - at the climate change talks in Copenhagen next week, it will make little immediate difference to an array of environmental problems that we face now: the unseen toxic mix that is killing house sparrows, the chainsaws and bulldozers that are destroying rainforests and peat swamps to convert them to oil palm plantations, the rivers that are loaded with chemicals and heavy metals.
'While climate change is natural, the hype over it is totally political,' maintains Dr Arun D. Ahluwalia, director of the Centre of Advanced Studies in Geology at Panjab University, Chandigarh.
'This din over climate change diverts our attention from pollution, the biggest man-made disaster,' he argues.
'Pollution is a bigger issue than global warming - which is largely natural and has been going on since 20,000 years ago but not steadily and with two mini ice ages in between.'
In fact, the intense focus on greenhouse gases and global warming risks diverting much needed resources and attention from local, perennial - and dangerous - environmental problems, most of which are driven not by climate change, but by people.
Millions of people for instance, unknowingly support the destruction of Indonesia's rainforests to make way for palm oil.
Friends of the Earth, in its 2005 report titled The Oil For Ape Scandal, said one in 10 leading supermarket products in Britain contained palm oil. They include the popular Kit Kat chocolate.
The British daily The Independent in a more recent report concluded that palm oil was 'confirmed or suspected in 43 of Britain's 100 best-selling grocery brands.'
'If you strip out drinks, pet food and household goods, the picture is starker still: 32 out of 62 of Britain's top foods contain this tree-felling, wildlife-wrecking ingredient,' The Independent declared.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's scenarios for global warming may be accurate - or they may not. Some scientists even think the point is moot.
Many academics like Dr Ahluwalia from evolutionary disciplines like geology or evolutionary biology take the long view and believe that even if global warming is occurring, it is natural and there is little people can do about it.
What really matters is not computer projections but the hard facts - and there the evidence is grim. Long before the IPCC appeared on the scene, for instance, the scientific consensus was that human activity is driving many species to extinction well before their time.
Human health is suffering from the pollution we dump into the environment. Since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on the reduction of greenhouse gases, a continent-sized island of plastic waste has been discovered in the Pacific Ocean.
And the Asian 'brown cloud' of particulate pollution from heavy industry, households and automobiles, has been detected over the Indian Ocean.
In his studies in Taiwan's oldest national park, Kenting, in southern Taiwan, Professor G. Agoramoorthy, who lectures on environmental sciences at Taiwan's Tajen University, found that the park's apparently pristine ecosystem was loaded with heavy metals.
In his 2005 book No Turning Back, Richard Ellis wrote: 'We began modestly - and recently - killing off many large animals for food or self-defence.'
'But in recent years we have ratcheted up the rate; we are now mowing down entire species with terrible and reckless abandon. In many instances, we do not directly target the particular species, but if we poison or destroy the habitat in which it lives, the result is the same.'
Whatever happens at Copenhagen, severe and immediate environmental problems will still be with us. Orang utans, tigers, whales - and rare life forms we have not even discovered yet - will still be disappearing. The region will still periodically choke on the smoke from the burning Indonesian forests. Grains and fruits will still be loaded with pesticides.
Reducing carbon emissions is not a silver bullet. It is imperative, say many scientists, that greenhouse gases and global warming are not allowed to bury the other, more immediate, everyday environmental crises that we have to deal with.
