Ross Gelbspan: A Challenging Climate For Oxfam

Posted: 1 September 2003

The increasingly rapid rate of change of the global climate makes Oxfam's struggle for social and economic justice more stressful and less predictable.

Ross Gelbspan

Ross Gelbspan: “Relief agencies need to recognize that traditional '100 year floods' are becoming annual events.”

By: Paul Gitlin

Climate impacts hit the world's poor hardest because developing countries cannot afford strong enough infrastructures to withstand increasingly frequent and more disruptive natural disasters. In 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a UN agency representing more than 2,000 scientists from 100 countries, stressed that poor countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America are most vulnerable to the devastating droughts, floods, heat waves, violent storms, and warming-driven spread of infectious diseases that mark the early stages of global warming. In just the first half of 2003, for example:

In Lesotho, early rains, untimely frost, and severe storms destroyed crops and contributed to unusual famine conditions.
In mid-January, an unusual four-week cold snap killed more than 1,300 people in India, Nepal, and Bangladesh.
In early May, an intense heat wave triggered fires in northern Mexico that consumed nearly 400,000 acres of land.

This instability will only intensify as carbon dioxide from cars, power plants, homes, and factories continues to trap heat inside the atmosphere. Concentrations of atmospheric carbon today are unprecedented in the last 420,000 years. That guarantees other ominous and perhaps irreversible disruptions:

In mountain villages in Bolivia, the rapid melting of glaciers is depriving farmers of water for irrigation and jeopardizing drinking water supplies.
In the Pacific, rising sea levels are prompting plans to relocate the populations of Tuvalu and other island nations.
In Mexico and Colombia, mosquitoes, traditionally unable to survive above 1,000 meters because of colder temperatures, are now spreading malaria and dengue fever to communities as high as 2,200 meters in Columbia, as warming temperatures expand their range.

Relief agencies need to recognize that traditional "100 year floods" are becoming annual events. Food supplies are vulnerable to longer droughts, fires, and insect attacks. Scientists project a 30 percent decline in the yields of wheat, rice, and maize in developing countries, and a dramatic increase in crop-destroying and disease-spreading insects.

But the climate crisis also holds profound opportunities for Oxfam and other development-based NGOs.

The science is unambiguous: the solution to climate change requires a 70 percent reduction in carbon fuel use worldwide—which translates into a global transition to clean energy sources—solar, wind, biomass, and hydrogen fuels.

That challenge is already being addressed in Europe. Holland plans to cut carbon emissions by 80 percent in 40 years. Tony Blair just pledged to cut emissions in the U.K. by 60 percent in 50 years. And Germany has committed to cuts of 50 percent in 50 years.

But even if the countries of the North cut their emissions dramatically, those cuts would be overwhelmed by carbon emissions from India, China, Mexico, Nigeria, and all other countries who depend on their fossil fuel resources.

The implications for development are profound. Energy investments in poor countries create far more wealth than equivalent investments in other sectors. A properly structured plan to provide clean energy to developing countries would create millions of jobs and raise living standards even as it slowed climate change. It would allow poor countries to grow without regard to atmospheric limits and, in many cases, without the budgetary burden of imported oil. In the long run, it would help turn impoverished countries into robust trading partners. (For one possible global strategy, see: "Toward A Real Kyoto Protocol" at www.heatisonline.org.)

Finally, climate change is no longer a science issue. Nor is it the exclusive franchise of environmental groups. It represents a titanic clash of interests. The real solution to global warming threatens the survival of the world's oil and coal industries which, taken together, constitute the biggest commercial enterprise in history.

The problem will be addressed only when there is a broad coalition of groups cooperating politically to force a global transition to clean energy. That coalition could include groups involved in international development and relief, environment, campaign finance reform, corporate accountability, public health, labor, environmental justice, and human rights—in addition to the religious community which is especially responsive to the moral dimensions of the climate crisis.

The bad news is that we have a very short time in which to fend off very serious disruptions. According to one study, the world needs to be getting half its energy from non-carbon sources by 2018 to avoid a catastrophic buildup of atmospheric carbon later in this century.

The good news is that a solution to the climate crisis provides a common umbrella for many constituencies to come together in a mutual campaign to further their individual goals.

The outcome would be a dramatic expansion in the overall wealth and equity of the global economy. The alternative would render all the work of Oxfam and its partner groups around the world ultimately irrelevant.

Ross Gelbspan is author of The Heat Is On: the Climate Crisis, the Cover-Up, the Prescription (Perseus Books, 1998). For 31 years, he was an editor and reporter at The Philadelphia Bulletin, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe. At the Globe, he conceived and edited a series of articles that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1984.

Visit www.heatisonline.org to read more about the climate crisis, including a recent history of extreme weather events, major scientific findings about climate change, and a proposed solution to stabilize the climate and expand overall wealth in the global economy.