We already talked about climate change in the Global week for actions for Climate Justice with our video about Polar bear. We hear every day a lot about climate change in the media, but our volunteer team wanted to go deep and know more about the inconvenient truths and lies about the global warming and climate politics. We therefore decided to have a “Climate Week” in Postaja, consisting in different parts.
I *Marco* organized a presentation and discussion about climate change and I tried to shortly show all I already knew. Most of this information was obvious for me, so I will quickly explain some things that for other people are not known. Let start talking about what is climate change and global warming. Climate changes are the oscillations in the climate of the earth along its history due to different natural causes. However, global warming is the rising in the global temperature of the Earth from the 19th century that can be explain by the impact of human activities in climate mechanisms. The Greenhouse Effect is caused by the absorption by gases, like CO2, of the heat reflected by the surface of the planet that maintain a temperature of 14 degrees on Earth. However, the greenhouse gas emissions are producing the accumulation of these gases and an overheating of the atmosphere. These rising and its feed in the temperature are producing changes in the climate with catastrophic consequences in the biosphere and humanity. For example it’s changing the distribution of rain, and some places are suffering lack of water with consequences in agriculture. They are happening also changes in the habitat of species that endanger the survival of some plants and animals. These are only a couple of examples, but there are so many more. The more optimistic predictions show a rise in the temperature at least of 2 degrees in this century, with more than 5 degrees in the more pessimistic. If we don’t reduce the emissions the consequences could be even more catastrophic.
For more information:
Helena talked about the situation of the governmental actions and compromises related with global warming in the last years. Summarizing, in the Convention of Rio de Janeiro in 1992 the United Framework Convention for Climate Change was formed. All the countries that signed the Convention meet each year in the Conferences of Parties *COP* to assess progress in climate change.One of the outcomes of these conferences is the Kyoto protocol that established obligation of reduction in the greenhouse gases to levels previous to 1990 and clean developed mechanisms that allows developed countries continue polluting paying a low price. However most of the countries didn’t fulfill the objectives of reduction which suggest the inefficiency of the current GHG reduction politics. Helena also explained her experience, and showed us some videos, as a climate activist in Copenhagen COP where only the rich countries were able to take decisions related to the climate politics.
Read more about climate politics:
About climate justice: http://www.climate-justice-now.org
Climate network: http://www.climatenetwork.org/
Adopt a negotiator: http://adoptanegotiator.org/
We also saw the documentary The Age of Stupid. This movie start with a vision of the future in 2055 with a Earth devastated by climate change and show six stories about how real people in the present are suffering the global warming.
Marco
Volunteers' Blog Kuterevo 
Leave a Reply