THE GREENHOUSE
DEBT
The debts that the wealthy countries
have recently forgiven their poorer
neighbours are nothing in comparison with
the amount that these countries already owe
the rest of the world for the increased
global warming they have caused and are
still causing. Inevitably there are links
between this and the rising frequency and
severity of storms, floods, droughts and
the damages caused in many places across
the world.
While debts worth roughly US$3 billion
have been conditionally written off by the
UK, the cost of the infrastructural damage
done by the recent floods in Venezuela
alone has been put at $10 billion. In
addition, tens of thousands of lives have
been lost there. Is anybody brave enough to
put a monetary value on these?
Moreover, the greenhouse gases that the
energy-intensive countries have discharged
into the atmosphere in the past two
centuries will stay there indefinitely,
causing death and destruction year after
year. The debt relief, on the other hand,
is a one-off event. Fifty-six countries
were affected by severe floods and at least
45 by drought during 1998, the most recent
year for which figures are available. In
China, the worst floods for 44 years
displaced 56 million people in the Yangtze
basin and destroyed almost five percent of
the country's output for the year. Climate
change was one of the causes. In
Bangladesh, an unusually long and severe
monsoon season flooded two-thirds of the
country for over a month and left 21
million people homeless.
Paul Epstein of the Harvard Medical
School has estimated that in the first
eleven months of 1998, weather-related
losses totalled $89 billion and that 32,000
people died and 300 million were displaced
from their homes. This was more than the
total losses experienced throughout the
1980s, he said. The rate of destruction
will accelerate because greenhouse gases
are still being added to the atmosphere at
perhaps five times the rate that natural
systems can remove them. By 2050, annual
losses could theoretically amount to
anywhere between 12 percent and 130 percent
of the gross world product. In other words,
more than the total amount the world
produces that year could be destroyed and
life as we know it could collapse. For the
industrialized countries, the damage could
be anywhere between 0.6 percent and 17
percent of their annual output, and for the
rest of the world, between 25 percent and
250 percent.
Excerpted from a letter, drafted by
the UK-based Global Commons Institute and
signed by a number of organizations
including FoE England, Wales and Northern
Ireland, published in the British
Independent newspaper. The proposed
solution for the climate crisis is
'contraction and convergence', a system of
equitable redistribution of environmental
space. For more information, see website
www.gci.org.uk.
