The Bahamas, Climate Change and the Revenge of Gaia

by Larry Smith

Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” — Mark Twain

At the height of the Cold War, a huge underground bunker deep in the Rocky Mountains was crammed with sophisticated instruments to detect and deter military threats from the Soviet bloc.

The North American Aerospace Defence Command (or NORAD) was a “doomsday” machine designed to fight a nuclear war that no-one could win. The Cold War is over now, but life on Earth is still under threat - although from a very different quarter.

Recently, newspapers reported the building of another kind of ‘NORAD’ in the heart of a mountain on a frozen island in the Norwegian Arctic. And some say the future of humanity could rest within this multi-million-dollar concrete vault.

But instead of radars and computers, it will contain a collection of two million plant seeds, representing all known varieties of the crops that mankind developed in the 10,000 years since agriculture was invented.

The UN-approved vault will be built to last forever, protected by airlocks and high-security blast-proof doors. It is designed to safeguard crop diversity in the event of a global environmental catastrophe. This doomsday seed bank is one more sign of rising concern over the impact of climate change on human civilisation and life in general.

As if to underline the threat, the US National Academies of Science reported just last week on surface temperature reconstructions over the last few thousand years. The report was commissioned by Congress and supports a key finding of previous research - that there has been unprecedented global warming during this period, and particularly in the last century or so.

Reliable records go back only about 150 years, so scientists estimate this information from tree rings, corals, marine sediments, cave deposits, ice cores, boreholes, glaciers and documents: “There is sufficient evidence,” the report concluded, ”to say with a high level of confidence that the last few decades of the 20th century were warmer than any comparable period in the last 400 years.”

Ever since the 1970s scientists have been warning that rising levels of greenhouse gases (such as carbon dioxide) in the atmosphere could cause significant changes in climate that could be disastrous. But there was resistance by some to the idea that human activity was the cause of global warming, and even greater scepticism that it would lead to global catastrophe.

In 1988 the UN set up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to analyse and report on scientific findings. And four years later 180 nations signed the Climate Change Convention in Brazil, agreeing to prevent "dangerous" warming from greenhouse gases and setting an initial target of
cutting emissions from industrialised countries to 1990 levels by the year 2000.

The Kyoto Protocol in 1997 agreed on emissions cuts for industrialised nations of less than 6 per cent, to be met by 2010. But the US under George Bush refused to ratify the agreement, citing the lack of controls over emissions from big developing countries like China and India. So far, the best plan offered by American politicians — the Climate Stewardship act — aims to cut emissions in the US merely to 2000 levels by 2010. And the Senate has rejected it twice.

But scientists say that if current trends continue, greenhouse gas concentrations will rise to double pre-industrial levels during this century: “That will probably be enough to raise global temperatures by around 2 to 5°C,” according to New Scientist Magazine. “Some warming is certain, but the degree will be determined by feedbacks involving melting ice, the oceans, water vapour, clouds and changes to vegetation.”

The visible evidence of global warming is all around us. Glaciers are receding. Arctic sea ice is melting faster every year, and satellites have determined that Antarctica is losing about 36 cubic miles of ice a year. Experts say human activity could trigger an irreversible melting of the ice sheets in this century that would raise sea levels more than 15 feet - enough to flood land occupied by billions of people, including the low-lying Bahamas.

Besides a rise in sea level, the BEST Commission identifies many other potential dangers from global warming that could affect us – including more and stronger hurricanes, droughts, spreading tropical diseases, loss of farm land, and extinction of many species of animals and plants – with dire and unpredictable consequences for humanity.

The Bahamas is more vulnerable than most to the effects of climate change since 80 per cent of our land is within five feet of mean sea level. Coastal facilities are likely to suffer heavy damage from storm surges. Fresh water reservoirs will be contaminated and we can expect increased flooding from heavier rains, as well as more malaria, dengue and other tropical diseases. Tourism will decline as our major markets become warmer.

As former BEST Commission advisor John Hammerton said recently, “Given that most of the Bahamas is a low-lying coastal zone subject to storm surge and sea level rise, we should be anticipating the possible impacts of climate change and developing strategies to protect our habitats and landscapes based on the best predictions.”

The question is: Should we bother to do anything about the possible effects of climate change? And if the answer is ‘yes’, what should we do, and how should we go about it?’

According to Gordon Brown, the British finance minister, the challenges of global warming point principally towards less burning of fossil fuels and greater energy efficiency: “We must make climate stability, energy investment and energy security central to economic policy,” he said in a recent speech. “All governments must work together to tackle it.”

Brown said the economic costs associated with an increase in average global temperature “could lead to instability in some countries. And as economic instability increases risk and undermines investment, so climate change will come to threaten our economic development and growth.”

And the New Scientist said:”The bottom line is that we will need to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 70 to 80 per cent simply to stabilise temperatures. The quicker we do that, the less unbearably hot our future world will be.”

Of course, the sceptic’s view is of a planet where global warming isn't happening — or, if it is, it isn't happening because of anything we are doing wrong. Or, if it is happening because of what we are doing, it isn't going to be a big problem. And, even if it is a big problem, we can't realistically do anything about it other than try to adapt. But sceptics are becoming fewer on the ground these days.

There is a related scientific theory which sees the Earth as a single giant organism – and the balanced interrelationship between animals, plants, the land, the sea and the atmosphere as critical to the survival of the whole. This is called the Gaia hypothesis, and it was first proposed in the 1960s by a British scientist named James Lovelock.

Gaia was the ancient Greek name for Mother Earth. Gaia was worshiped throughout Greece as the primordial element from which all the gods originated, and in Roman mythology was known as Terra.

Lovelock, one of the world’s most distinguished ecologists, has written a new book called the ‘Revenge of Gaia’, which talks about global catastrophe on a biblical scale. According to Lovelock, the Earth is about to pass into a morbid fever that may last a hundred thousand years: “I have to tell you, as members of the Earth's family and an intimate part of it, that you and especially civilisation are in grave danger.”

Before this century is over, he predicts, billions will die and the few who survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.

“Our planet has kept itself healthy and fit for life, just like an animal does, for most of the more than three billion years of its existence. It was ill luck that we started polluting at a time when the sun is too hot for comfort. We have given Gaia a fever and soon her condition will worsen to a state like a coma. She has been there before and recovered, but it took more than 100,000 years. We are responsible and will suffer the consequences.”

And what can we do about it? “First, we have to keep in mind the awesome pace of change and realise how little time is left to act; and then each community and nation must find the best use of the resources they have to sustain civilisation for as long as they can. The big threat to the planet, Lovelock says, is people: “there are too many of us, doing too well economically, and burning too much oil.”

According to the latest edition of the Pew Global Attitudes Survey, the two countries least concerned about global warming are the two greatest producers of greenhouse gases - the US and China, where only 19 and 20 per cent respectively say they “worry a great deal” about the problem.

But clearly, energy security has become the key issue of our age. Not only will it affect the prospects for global war or peace, it could determine the future of the entire planetary ecosystem.

It’s not nice to fool with Mother Nature.

Comments

[Sara Callender]

I think The Bahamas could do its part by considering a few things:

Perhaps it would be worthwhile to encourage the purchase of hybrid cars and encourage the local car dealers to make sure that they have their mechanics trained and have the equipment necessary to be able to properly service them.

The gov’t could offer tax breaks on the duties charge to import these types of vehicles.

As small as our islands are, we generate a tremendous amount of garbage. Why isn’t there more recycling? This would generate a new industry in itself and create jobs.

Also, there are more and more building materials & appliances being created that make homes more efficient/environmentally friendly. Why doesn’t the gov’t consider offering property tax/duty breaks to create an incentive for people to use these appliances/materials that will make their homes for energy efficient?

There are also other forms of energy that can be harnessed in order to generate electricity (solar, wind, tidal energy). What is The Bahamas doing about this? We have lots of sun and lots of water. Why are we still burning so much fuel?

Keep up the good work!

[TRACY]

More Civics, less CRVs!

[Patrick Leslie]

Sara brings up some great points, particularly with respect to alternative energy. We at The Island School and Cape Systems Limited are reseraching, creating working models, and consulting on the solar and renewable energy technologies that are most appropriate for the Bahamas environmentally and economically. We have the largest solar array and largest wind turbine in the Bahamas, among many renewable and energy efficient technologies. Visitors to our Cape Eleuthera campus are always welcome. Contact: pleslie@capesystemslimited.com

[Percival Miller]

I agree with Sara’s points on the possible energy approaches. Solar energy is clearly the big, distributable, rather than centralized, renewable energy option, as it can be applied at public offices and buildings, businesses, and homes. However most people are unlikely to be afford solar systems for residences, so subsidies are likely to be needed, particularly for the poorer sector, in order to guarantee them an opportunity for basic power supply for things like light, cooking, heating, and/or possibly refrigeration and cooling. With hybrid vehicles as Sara mentions, and electric cars (single roundtrips are likely to be in the range 50-200 miles), we could further reduce our imported oil, etc., dependence, and perhaps thereby reduce the currently astronomic consumer costs for energy. Biomass also offers a number of options - we could use some of our organic wastes in anaerobic digesters to produce methane to run microturbines for on-site electricity, or apply the same biogas production concepts to sewage treatment/sludge production systems (treatment plants, biodigesters, specifically designed septic systems). In the case of organic wastes we have to simultaneously consider the intrinsic value of byproducts to our food growing capacity - for example composts; since our agricultural capacity is unlikely to escape the impacts of climate change.