Carbon pollution is warming our planet. It’s happening everywhere. The truth is we are already paying the costs of carbon.
24 Hours of Reality, a global online event run by The Climate Reality Project took place last week. Over two days they took us around the world from Africa to Australia, identifying the costs of carbon pollution and the solutions to climate change that can change the course of our futures.
It was a global call to action to put a price on carbon, and more than 20 million people worldwide tuned in to watch.
The Australian segment focused on how human health threats are exacerbated by climate change and the cost of inaction will mean paying with our health and our livelihoods. Read our post about it here.
As I am currently living in Brazil, and have recently spent time in Mexico and in the past on marine conservation projects in the Bahamas, the South American & Caribbean segment of 24 Hours of Reality which focused on 'water as our lifeblood' was particularly interesting to watch.
What we are seeing in South America & the Caribbean is more intense weather events related to water, and also the water which people depend upon to live no longer can be counted on.
Floods, torrential rains, mudslides, rapidly melting glaciers, coral damage, ocean acidification, rising sea levels and water scarcity are welling into a pool of issues already effecting SA & the Caribbean. This is the cost of carbon.
Brazil has seen some intense torrential rains over the past few years, like in the southeast Rio state during 2011 where torrential rains caused flooding and mudslides which claimed over 500 lives and left countless people homeless.
Flooding and mudslides are common in Brazil when the summer rains come, but these were the worst in recent history. Such disasters punish the poor, who often live in rickety shacks perched perilously on steep hillsides with little or no foundations.
Footage from the 24 Hours of reality segment showed a resident of Teresopolis, Brazil where the mudslides hit the hardest. With these natural disasters he said, “we see human life is very fragile”. The earth is fragile too, and this is why we are starting to see more and more of these kinds of events. Climate change is fundamentally changing the delicate systems of our earth.
Phillippe Cousteau, an environmental journalist and panelist for the SA & Caribbean segment commented how “w ater is that issue that reminds us of the human connection with climate change.”
Around the world, communities, livelihoods and lives are being destroyed because they have no access to water. Already a billion people today are living without access to water.
In Bolivia the issue of water access is becoming particularly alarming. 70% of the glaciers in Bolivia have disappeared, meaning less water especially for the communities living in the areas directly irrigated by the glacial waters.
In Peru also, 22% of their glaciers have been lost in the last 30 years. The costs of carbon we are already seeing in these areas and as Cousteau said “what we do with water, particularly in places like South America, will define the trajectory of climate change forward.”
Into the Caribbean we also hear about coral bleaching because of ocean acidification. Coral reefs provide 4 billion annually to the Caribbean, and change is happening so fast. Everything in the water is being depleted. I have seen this firsthand during a 3-month marine conservation project in the Bahamas where the state of the coral in some areas was incredibly saddening. This is happening in Australia on our own Great Barrier Reef too. It’s worrying to think that my children and grandchildren will not get to experience the world and our waters the same way as today!
However, “We still have time,” said panelist Christina Figueres, who is the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. “We can still make a future of more jobs, better energy, food and water security, better health! We have a short period of time to work within, the IPCC has sounded a voice of alarm to get up, and we can still have the kind of world we all dream of.”
Figueres spoke of Costa Rica, the country where she grew up, as they have taken on the goal of being a carbon neutral country by 2021. This is the kind of target that other countries should be determined to achieve.
She also spoke of climate change being the ultimate test of collaboration. There are difficulties for developing countries that do not have the infrastructure to face the challenges of climate change alone. However, no country can sit and wait for the help of outside countries, the revolutions need to happen first from the bottom up to meet the top down processes of international help. This is the catalyst for action.
What we have is an opportunity for people and countries to take action in their own unique ways. We are seeing this already throughout South America & the Caribbean. In Brazil for example they are starting to use processes to create renewable energy from biomass. In Bolivia they are starting to use more solar panels, and in Argentina solar cookers. All of these actions to prevent carbon pollution in the atmosphere will help stop the effects of global warming which is changing our water.
“When we talk about climate change and the science, it still feels a cerebral concept, you forget this is about people lives and peoples livelihoods.”