Human population growth should be the real issue in the debate about tackling catastrophic climate change yet it is not even on the agenda in Copenhagen, a Kent author has argued.
Christopher Lloyd, who lives near Sevenoaks, called for it to become socially taboo to have more than two children and criticised politicians for not being will to debate the thorny and controversial subject.
"In my mind there is only one issue and all the other ones are side shows," he said. "It is pointless trying to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, trying to not chop down as much forest etc if you do not address the issue of a growing human population dependent on livestock.
"If we do not address that nothing else can be successful. How many extra people born every day? It is 200,000, which is how we’ve gone from 1billion in 1800 to 7billion today."
In a week's time, world leaders, policy-makers and environmentalists will gather in the Danish capital for the United Nations climate change conference to negotiate a deal to prevent catastrophic global warming.
Mr Lloyd, a former Sunday Times journalist, whose books including What on Earth Happened?, bring together the story of the planet, the natural world and people to show how everything is linked together. He believes that to have a global perspective on the future in order to combat issues such as climate change we need an interconnected, global view of the past.
"Population growth is far too delicate an issue for politicians to bring up," he added. "There are issues from the Holocaust, one child policy and human rights but if we are being honest we have to have that discussion and debate. Without it we might as well not bother about the other things."
Steve Dawe, who lives in Tonbridge and is a former lecturer in environmental policy and a current lecturer in public policy, agreed that the contribution of domesticated animals to greenhouse gas emission could not be ignored.
The spokesman for the Kent Green Party said: "We need a programme for substituting food growing for a proportion of the cattle, sheep, pigs and other animals we are using. Also, there has to be recognition that using land for biofuels is driving up food prices and must be stopped."
Mr Dawe said that the international community had roughly six years to cut emissions before global temperatures rose by more than 2°C.
"Climate scientists are agreed that increases above this level will do serious damage to water supplies, agricultural land, levels of rainfall and seriously expand deserts," he said. "In addition, the number of extreme weather events will increase at an even faster rate than in the last 25 years."
People in Cumbria have suffered from the worst flooding in memory over the past weeks and such extreme weather events are set to become more frequent with climate change.
Asked for his ideal outcome in Copenhagen, Mr Dawe said: "A global commitment to phase out the use of fossil fuels within about 15 years.
"This means a worldwide commitment to energy efficiency improvements and expansion of renewable energy.
"It also means that all forms of surface transport must be powered by electricity from renewable sources, or hydrogen fuels cells with the production process which does not include the use of fossil fuels. Rich states must help poorer states achieve this.
"Aviation and shipping fuel must be taxed to reduce the use of fossil fuels immediately in these sectors, forcing a rapid change of technologies."
He added: "Old polluting industries are lobbying hard against effective, binding agreements. They have supporters amongst political parties and governments.
"Despite the consensual, scientific evidence there are still people who deny climate change. Richer countries must fund progress on energy efficiency and renewables in poorer states as part of the global effort to cut emissions."
Climate change sceptics hit the headlines this week as a result of leaked emails. Dr Andrew Haggart, senior lecturer in geography and environmental science at the University of Greenwich at Medway, said the episode was a "blatant attempt" to undermine the credibility of scientists and sow confusion among the public in the run-up to the Copenhagen summit.
"Selective trawling through hundreds of emails and files written between 1996 and 2009 and the publishing of one or two choice phrases out of context is just a smear campaign, a smokescreen," he said.
"Global warming is demonstrated by a variety of measures, not just the temperature records collected by the Climatic Research Unit at University of East Anglia but also by similar records at other independent institutions, by sea-level rise, glacier retreat and melting of Arctic sea ice.
"The vast majority of scientists working in this area believe climate change caused by human activity is real and measurable."
He said that to keep global warming under 2°C there will need to be a global reduction in greenhouse gases of between 25 and 40 per cent relative to 1990 levels.
"If this is not attained, which seems likely, then the stakes just get higher," Dr Haggart, who also lectures at Hadlow College in Tonbridge, added. "At the very least there must be a political consensus to strive towards a more binding agreement in the near future.
"The sooner we realise we are all in this together the better, the Earth has finite resources which we are using up too rapidly and at the moment there is no escape."
POSTED: 29/11/2009 11:00:00
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