Electronic Newsletter, no. 31 (July-September), p. 7. Full Text

Climate change has been receiving plenty of publicity as not only a global crisis but also as perhaps the greatest global crisis which humanity has ever faced. There is little doubt that climate change resulting from human activity is threatening many ecosystems and many human settlements. From rapid species extinctions and biome shifts to evacuating coastlines and low-lying islands, greenhouse gas emissions, especially from using fossil fuels but also from other human activities, are a major culprit. Even if human greenhouse gas emissions were to total zero as of tomorrow, we would still be facing climate change's legacy for decades, possibly even centuries. But if human-caused climate change could be miraculously halted tomorrow, would that solve the identified threats? A November 2006 fisheries study “projects the global collapse of all taxa currently fished by the mid-21st century ” (Worm et al., 2006: 790) with the focus being overfishing, not climate change. Deforestation leads to landslide and flood disasters and is destroying ecosystems, as Curran et al. (2004) document for Borneo including inside protected areas. Powerful interests behind overfishing and large-scale logging have even argued that climate change will ruin these resources, so humanity might as well exploit them now. Of course, without climate change, these interests would still be involved in these destructive activities and would still b