Chege Mbitiru
7 April 2008
Nairobi — The most conspicuous anti-global warming celebrity today announced an expensive media blitz last Monday. Former US Vice President Albert Arnold "Al" Gore hopes to stir US populace into anti-global warming war. It's a narrow focus.
Global warming isn't a term some people, for example, President George W. Bush, favour. They prefer climate change. Some reject the notion man-made global warming has anything to do with weather change. After all, weather changed before humans evolved or deities awarded them the globe.
Anyway, Mr Gore of the "I used to be the next president of the United States" fame in the film An Inconvenience Truth wouldn't object to the term global warming. Unfortunately, the "next" honour went to Mr Bush. He proceeded to make some parts of the world "hot."
Undaunted, Mr Gore retooled himself into many things and took a share of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. The film won the Academy Award. His flagship though remains the non-profit Alliance for Climate Protection, which he chairs.
Through the Alliance, Mr Gore plans to spend $300 million (Sh18.6 billion) in three years to mobilise Americans - why they aren't referred to as Usanians makes no sense - on climate change.
The "We" campaign will be through the media. Well known personalities will deliver battle cries.
"We can solve the climate crisis, but it will require a major shift in public opinion and engagement," Mr Gore said in a statement. It added the "technologies exist." However, elected leaders need a push to enact required legislations. Other right things will follow. Politicians listen when they hear "the American people calling loud and clear for change."
The blitz will attempt to convince Americans "a clean energy economy is a win for American jobs." Options galore exist: wind power, solar thermal to power turbines, solar panels and geothermal power, to name just a few, the Alliance says in its Web site. It then gives examples of so far successful usage of these options.
For a sweetener, the Alliance argues installation of windmills in a section of southwest United States would meet the country's electricity needs.
Who needs the proposed 100-plus proposed carbon dioxide bellowing coal-fuelled power plants?
Started the same day
The timing of Mr Gore's announcement was opportune. A five-day UN-sponsored Bangkok Climate Change Talks 2008 started the same day. It's a continuation of last December's Bali meeting.
The 192 parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change agreed in Bali to speed negotiations for a long-term international pact. Other such gatherings will undoubtedly follow before a final one in Denmark at the end of next year. Then, Inchallah, the parties will agree on a deal to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. The United States, world's leading emitter of everything the globe loathes, isn't a signatory.
The Nobel Peace Prize awarding committee commended Mr Gore for "efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."
Unfortunately, Mr Gore is confining his message in the United States. Well, people everywhere need to push their political leaders. The warming is a global problem. That's why Mr Gore should have gone global, "Peoples of the world unite; you have nothing to loose but a filthy globe" sort of thing.
There are people who consider efforts a la Mr Gore just examples of "Voodoo Science of global warming," to borrow Mr Iqbal Latif's words. He wrote that while belittling in the Global Politician magazine the significance of a collapse of a chunk of Antarctica ice seven times the size of Manhattan.
Mr Latif's argument is that nature has been repairing itself for millions of years while human existence is a mere anecdote. Moreover, anti-global warming activists ignore "innovation of man." Well, correcting human mistakes qualifies as innovation.
Mr Gore's globalising the blitz might also award him a sweetener, posthumously. Mr Bush might end up being remembered as a warmonger who lived during Mr Gore's campaign to save the globe.
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Mr AlGore you are ‘Robbing Peter paying Paul’
More people are expected to die of famine in Africa than imprinting a larger CO2 footprint. 'Al Gore Environmental policies' are aimed at ‘Robbing Peter paying Paul.’ Green based priorities are creating severe food shortages. Hunger in African will kill faster and will have larger impact on the flimsy structure of the growing under class of the world.
In a display of over enthusiasm to grow crops for biofuels to control toxic emissions a lot of agricultural land has been diverted away from food and led to severe price hikes. Robert Zoellick, World Bank's president, says that food prices have risen by 83% in the past three years. The price of wheat had risen by 120% in the past year, more than doubling the cost of a loaf of bread. Rice prices were up by 75% in just two months.
The Guardian reports that in Bangladesh a 2kg bag of rice now consumes almost half of the daily income of a poor family. With little margin for survival, rising prices too often means fewer meals, Poor people in Yemen were now spending more than a quarter of their income on bread. The Bank's analysis chimes with research from the International Monetary Fund which shows that Africa will be the hardest hit continent from rising food prices. More than 20 African countries will see their trade balance worsen by more than 1% of GDP through having to pay more for food. Robert Zoellick, the Bank's president, called on rich countries to commit an extra $500m (£250m) immediately to the World Food Programme, and sign up to what he called a "New Deal for global food policy".
The economic impact of all this cannot be overemphasized higher inflation as a result of higher food costs will lead to economic slowdowns as interest rates may have to escalated instead of being cut ( to encourage recovery) to contain food inflation, a scenario of stagflation is possible if this foolish diversion of resources in developing expensive biofuels from crops is not altered. The hardest hit from such global economic situation will be the countries on the lowest rung of poverty ladder. Will someone put some senses to this whole dialog.