Climate disaster

Published on 16/10/2012 00:00

Alex Salmond is wrong to focus on “developing low carbon technologies” as the principle “moral imperative” in the climate debate (Perspective, 6 October. We must invest our limited resources wisely, focusing on problems we know to be real and that we can help remedy.

For example, we know poor people and poor nations are affected by climate change today. According to the United Nations, one million children are at risk of starvation largely because of the drought in the Sahel region of East Africa. Yet, the UN has not been able to meet its fundraising targets to help save them.

This is because, only 5 per cent of the roughly £62 billion spent each year in the world on climate finance goes to helping people affected by real climate change today; 95 per cent of it is devoted to controlling global climate decades in the future.

Even if it were possible to control climate, and more scientists say it is not, it makes no sense to focus more on what might some day happen than on helping vulnerable people adapt to climate change today.

African delegates at the Copenhagen Climate Conference in 2009 told me they were angry developed countries seemed to place more value on people yet to be born than those suffering now. Whether one believes humanity is causing problematic climate change or not, whether one is left, right or centre, it should not matter.

Today’s approach to climate change is unjust.

Tom Harris

International Climate 
Science Coalition

Ottawa, Ontario