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FMR US VP AL GORE SHARES AWARD WITH THE UN'S IPCC, FOR GLOBAL CAMPAIGN TO EDUCATE PUBLIC 14 October 2007 Climate change is no longer controversial; it has been accepted as scientific fact by a global consensus of researchers and policy makers, including the Bush White House, which resisted acknowledging human activities were a vital contributing factor, until recently. Now the Nobel committee selecting the Peace Prize laureate has raised the issue of warming posing a major international security crisis. Political opponents of the former US vice president, in the United States, have wasted no time in attacking both Gore and his message, claiming his research is sloppy and the message exaggerated, but the United Nations, the scientific community, the Pentagon, the White House, the European Union, and the Nobel Academy, clearly recognize that Gore's message is serious, and his work necessary. Even the staunchest pro-industry opponents of efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions now recognize something must be done. The White House has acknowledged global climate change and just last month called a major international conference to examine ways to reduce carbon emissions, the aim being to be more effective —if not aggressive— than the Kyoto Protocol, though it still insists it will not push for mandatory caps on emissions. Foreign leaders and environmental activists called the conference a "sham", and said it was an effort to forestall meaningful action to reduce emissions by imposing a global system of "voluntary caps" on emissions. Nevertheless, Pres. Bush said at the conference "Energy security and climate change are two of the great challenges of our time. The United States takes these challenges seriously", which shows the president's party has recognized the leadership of more moderate members, like the California governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has negotiated carbon treaties with other governors, in an effort to reduce emissions with or without Washington's help. Bush also acknowledged the validity of the IPCC's research, stating "A report issued earlier this year by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded both that global temperatures are rising and that this is caused largely by human activities. When we burn fossil fuels we release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and the concentration of greenhouse gases has increased substantially." And now, the political class in the US liberal-conservative hot-bed must grapple with the fact that climate change will be, when its most serious repercussions are felt, an international security issue, pushing millions of refugees across borders in search of basic sustenance, like water and food. And policy-makers in the US must come to terms with their very real role in shaping the global capacity to confront these adverse consequences. The Sudan is cited as a first-case. It's long civil war, in which the Khartoum-based regime fought against rebellions in the east, south and west of the country, had a lot to do with food and water scarcity, and the need to control natural resources like oil in order to have the wealth to import sufficient amounts of those vital commodities or to build needed irrigation. Khartoum would not allow local control in any part of the country. And while Darfur rages on, millions displaced and the migration creating tensions with Chad, the party representing the southern rebels has withdrawn from government, saying the regime has not followed through on its promises. The struggle for control of the nation's resources is both desperate and integral to its national politics. Further desertification, the "advance of the Sahara", threatens to return Sudan to multi-party civil war. More global cases involve countries like China, India and Pakistan, three nuclear powers, which could find themselves engaged in a brutal life and death struggle to provide water to their immense populations, as snow-melt from the Himalayan Plateau becomes scarce. The world cannot afford to allow such a war, or its causes, to burst forth. Human industry has resulted in the emission of massive amounts of excess carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which nature can not account for or "fix", by consuming and processing biochemically. That CO2 represents and imbalance whose effect is to flood climate systems with gases that if not consumed, will insulate the atmosphere and produce warming. It's not necessary to illustrate the entire scientific background here, but the result of prolonged warming —what seems gradual to us is, on the geological timescale, intensely accelerated, one to three degrees Celsius in just a few decades, after hundreds of millennia without such increases— is the destabilization of the structural foundations of the climate balance we're accustomed to and depending upon which we have built our societies. There is now 31% more CO2 in the atmosphere than before the industrial revolution, which throws nature's climate cycle out of balance, allowing more heat in areas that haven't evolved to deal with it, and provoking sometimes subtle processes of ecosystem collapse, which spur desertification and the permanent loss of fertile ground or richly biodiverse but fragile habitat. Mr. Gore's campaign, criticized by those who see "factual" inaccuracies in his Oscar-winning film —'errors' more akin to differences of opinion over reading existing data—, has been a great deal more than a single film. An Inconvenient Truth does bring together a comprehensive synthesis of the information he has worked with for decades, but it also distills it down to a feature-length film and filters it through the story of a committed individual. The real campaign to raise awareness about human-induced global climate change has spanned nearly two decades and involves worldwide travel, far more detailed, more intensive presentations of "the slideshow" whittled down in the film, and cooperation with some of the world's most prominent climate scientists. It ranges from Mr. Gore's work as US VP to push for a global climate and emissions treaty, and to ensure that the issue remains on the agenda of governments, the UN and trade bodies' negotiations. The IPCC, which shares the award with the world's most visible climate campaigner, has issued several reports this year alone putting top-line consensus climate science into the public domain and forcing governments to keep dealing with the issue publicly and diplomatically. [s]
BACKGROUND: Water is one of the "fundamental building-blocks of life", as is often said in science, in biology classrooms, in medicine, theology, environmental policy debates, and in cosmology and space exploration. It is also a commodity whose economic reality is increasingly defined by chronic scarcity and often intensely uneven distribution. One of the most vital problems regarding the global water supply is the fact that we are already over-exploiting it, draining vital fluvial systems and ancient underground aquifers that cannot be replenished. This, coupled with the population boom and increasing industrialization, urbanization and consumerization of emerging economies, means global scarcity is fast becoming the rule. [Full Story] DANUBE ADDED TO LIST OF MAJOR RIVERS IN DANGER OF DISAPPEARING How can a major river disappear? It is all too easy to thing this will never happen, that nature is in balance and will always find a way. But the reality is that nature replaced no-longer viable realities with others that can stand up to circumstance, and circumstance is stressing some major rivers beyond their capacity. The Danube is the latest to be added to a list of endangered rivers. [Full Story] WORLD’S WATER RESOURCES FACE MOUNTING PRESSURE Global freshwater use tripled during the second half of the twentieth century as population more than doubled and as technological advances let farmers and other water users pump groundwater from greater depths and harness river water with more and larger dams. As global demand soars, pressures on the world’s water resources are straining aquatic systems worldwide. Rivers are running dry, lakes are disappearing, and water tables are dropping. [Full Story] WORLD WATER DAY HIGHLIGHTS EFFECTS OF POVERTY, CLEAN WATER SCARCITY ON 1 BILLION WORLDWIDE Parts of east Africa have not seen rain for six years and six nations there are facing extreme famine. Through events organized by UNESCO, the UN and NGOs are hosting World Water Day today, to raise awareness of the problem of scarcity of safe drinking water affecting an estimated 1 billion people worldwide. [Full Story] AFRICA SUFFERS SPREAD OF FAMINE, HUNGER As the world begins to focus on the nearly 3 million facing hunger in Niger and the catastrophic refugee crisis in Darfur, in western Sudan, an estimated 31.1 million people across the continent face food shortages. Arable land, foodstocks and agriculture in general are suffering dangerous setbacks, making it increasingly difficult to feed African populations, some of which are growing rapidly. [Full Story] WORLD'S FRESH WATER RAPIDLY BEING DEPLETED, GLOBAL SHORTAGE FEARED The United Nations has been pushing for some time for a global strategy to deal with the looming scarcity of fresh water. A BBC report from June 2000 indicated 1 in 5 of all living human beings already lacks access to safe drinking water. Dramatically making the point that our oceans cannot solve the problem, the report says "Only 2.5% of the world's water is not salty, and two-thirds of that is locked up in the icecaps and glaciers." [Full Story]
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