Arctic Sea Ice Collapse Planetary Emergency
Hello Civicus World Assembly delegate, I am hoping you will promote an acknowledgement of the dire
state of global climate planetary emergency we are now all in, and issue a call for a global emergency
response by all parties. Please see Proposal below.
The Arctic sea ice is collapsing.
The World Bank has just issued a global hunger warning after droughts in the US and eastern Europe sent
food prices to a record high. The loss of Arctic cooling albedo increases Northern drought and extremes.
That is a dire planetary emergency and it is clear these governments will not move unless held
accountable by a planetary emergency declaration from civil society.
The loss of the Arctic summer sea ice albedo cooling will further increase the already established increase
in Northern hemisphere drought which will rapidly have a devastating effect on billions of people who will
be unable to afford food and less able to grow food. It would commit us to a planet unable to sustain
world agriculture.
It will boost the rate of Artic methane feedback emissions already established from all Arctic sources, and
drive up the renewed post 2007 sustained atmospheric methane increase, that is due to feedback
emissions from the warmed planet, faster. This is the prelude to runaway global climate change that
could eradicate almost all life.
Proposal
 Form a world peoples assembly Earth emergency network
 Declare the global climate planetary emergency- and demand an emergency response,
particularly led by a US and China partnership (The Millennium Project 2012 State of the Future
 Call for emergency global black carbon (soot) abatement.
 Call for a UN Security Council global climate world change food security emergency meeting
(the Council has met twice on climate change)
From Dr. Peter Carter BC Canada
petercarter46@shaw.ca 4 September 2012
The emergency situation
IBON International is reporting that at the UN climate convention intersessional at Bangkok States are not
considering international action on emissions till after 2020 and industrialized States are still obstructing
any progress on anything. That condemns us to a minimum 4.4°C warming by 2100 (Climate Interactive).
The collapse of the Arctic sea ice changes planet Earth substantially.
The Arctic sea ice collapse is by no means the only cause of today’s global climate planetary emergency,
but it is the most immediate and obvious.
Scientists call the Arctic summer sea ice the ‘air conditioner’ of the entire Northern hemisphere and its loss
will definitely further increase the already established increase in Northern hemisphere drought.
Seasoned observers and commentators are now expressing concern we looking at the collapse of
civilization and doing nothing. The developed world has forgotten that civilization is totally dependent on
the success of agriculture, particularly of the Northern hemisphere (eg. Blue Planet Laureates Rio+20
statement and George Monbiot).
It is no exaggeration to say the collapse of the Arctic sea ice is the global warming defining event for the
future survival of Humanity.
It is certainly an emergency for the billions of most climate change vulnerable today and for all future
generations. This is an emergency to mitigate planetary catastrophe to hummanity. Waiting to ‘adapt’ to
catastrophic world famine would be unconscionable, though this is the present climate policy approach.
The ultimate proof of the emergency is that the climate science commits us to a far higher warming than
today’s 0.8C that is causing the Arctic sea ice collapse and increasing droughts in the Northern
hemisphere, where all the world’s best food producing regions are located.
Though some individuals have been urging recognition of the global climate planetary emergency since
the public statement to this effect by James Hansen in 2008, there has been no general show of global
support or response.
It is high time there was from civil society, because the scientific community in general will not declare a
climate emergency as they have a policy of not making ‘policy prescriptive’ or ‘value judgement’
statements. It is up to us to warn and fight to save the world. The time as we have heard so often is now.
Another planetary emergency proof comes from the atmospheric greenhouse levels. They show we are
committing the future of Humanity and Life to runaway global climate change, certainly if we don’t
demand an emergency response now.
In particular Atmospheric methane, which increased two and half times since industrialization and levelled
off at 2000, is now on a fast sustained renewed increase and this time it is due to feedback methane
emissions given off by the warming planet.
For today’s atmospheric greenhouses and Arctic sea ice see
http://stateofclimate.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/ghgs-11-8-20121.png
We know that all sources of Arctic carbon feedback have been emitting more methane to the atmosphere
for several years. The latest bad carbon feedback news comes the coastal East Siberian land Ice Complex
that is emitting carbon dioxide ten times faster than had been thought possible as it crumbles.
The loss of the Arctic sea ice is a well known powerful feedback that will further increase the rates of
Arctic, Northern hemisphere and even global warming directly over the immediate and short term.
The sea ice loss will further accelerate the feedback emissions of methane and CO2 leading to an endless
vicious global warming feedback cycle, capable of eradicating almost all life.
We have no time left for NGOs to wait for further dramatic evidence of world population catastrophe
before they consider declaring a planetary emergency.
Cambridge University Arctic sea ice expert Professor Peter Wadhams says a total loss of summer sea ice is
possible in a few years. We must act strongly and decisively now.
After the summer sea ice is gone the winter sea ice will disappear, as the perennial sea ice is also
declining rapidly.
The Arctic has not been free of sea ice for over a million years. This is a catastrophic planet changing
event by any definition.
Scientists have warned for years that the loss of the Arctic summer sea ice would be a large global
warming feedback, but they did not foresee this happening for half a century.
The millions of square miles of Arctic sea ice albedo cooling is called the ‘air conditioner’ of the entire
Northern hemisphere by scientists. It is an essential reason why the normally temperature Northern
hemisphere climate is so conducive to agriculture.
Global drought has been increasing for 50 years in sync with global warming. Northern hemisphere
temperature has risen sharply since 1995 compared to the South. Northern hemisphere drought has been
increasing for 15 years.
When the ice goes, world food production will go into a progressive decline.
The age of cheap oil and of cheap food are over. The banking investment industry is already profiting from
higher oil prices and speculating on higher food prices. These are evil powers working against the survival
of humanity and life for more obscenely high profiteering.
States at the UN climate sessions are now taking of a post 2020 climate mitigation regime, but Rio+20
proved world powers will only protect the fossil fuel industry not the future of Humanity and Life.
World powers have us committed (condemned) to a global warming of 4.4°C by 2100 (Climate Interactive)
which is a commitment to over 8°C in all after 2100 due to ocean heat lag.
Since the big loss of Arctic summer sea ice in 2007, atmospheric methane has been on a renewed fast
sustained increase due to methane feedback emissions from warming Arctic and tropical peatlands. All
Arctic sources of methane feedback are emitting more methane as the Arctic warms several times faster
than the rest of planet Earth.
This is the prelude for runaway global heating. The loss of the Arctic sea ice would be a commitment to
future runaway. It is being ignored.
Today’s committed global climate change is in fact the worst ever crime against Humanity and Life.
So for any sense of global health and justice, all parties and recourses must now unite to address the
global climate emergency.
Dr. Peter Carter
IBON Climate Updates No.2 (Bangkok, August 31,2012) –
‘To kill, or not to kill’, while millions more are dying with the impacts of climate change.
This seems to be the undercurrent yesterday at the Bangkok Intersessionals of the United Nations
Framework Convention on
Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Climate Updates No. 5
(Bangkok, Sept. 4) – More ambiguity than clarity, and yet the picture is becoming clearer than ever. After
several sessions of the contact group on finance under the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long Term Cooperative
Action (AWG-LCA), it is becoming clearer that developed countries are exerting such tremendous effort in
making surethat no substantive discussion and decision regarding the future of climate change financing would
be reached in Bangkok, and perhaps not even at the COP 18 in Doha this end-November. And this certainly
does not bode well for communities especially in the developing countries who are already experiencing the
impacts of climate change – of people who desperately are in need of resources to enable them to survive the
impacts of floods, droughts and other effects of climate change
The Heat of the Moment George Monbiot
August 27, 2012
http://www.monbiot.com/2012/08/27/the-heat-of-the-moment/
Is this how our children will see it: that we destroyed the benign conditions which made our world of
wonders possible, then used the opportunity to amplify the damage? All of us, of course, can claim to
have acted with other aims in mind, or not to have acted at all, as the other immediacies of life seemed
more important. But – unless we respond at last – the results follow as surely as if we had sought to
engineer them.
Why The Arctic Sea Ice Death Spiral Matters
Neven Acropolis & Kevin McKinney
http://www.countercurrents.org/mckinney020912.htm
News articles on the dangers of Arctic sea ice loss are usually illustrated with pictures of polar bears. But
although many animals in the Arctic are threatened by the vanishing Arctic sea ice, homo sapiens may be
the species with most at stake. While Arctic sea ice may be “out of sight, out of mind” for many, it does
affect human civilization over the Northern hemisphere, and even beyond: after thousands of years in
which the sea ice played a vital role in the relatively stable conditions under which modern civilization,
agriculture and a 7 billion strong world population could develop, it increasingly looks as if warming
caused by the emission of greenhouse gases is bringing these stable conditions to an end.
Droughts prompt warning
http://www.theage.com.au/world/droughts-prompt-warning-20120831-255pz.html
WASHINGTON: The World Bank has issued a global hunger warning after droughts in the US and eastern
Europe sent food prices to a record high.
Damage to crop harvests from exceptionally dry weather this year have sharply raised the bank's food
price index, taking it above its peak in early 2011.
The Washington-based bank blamed the drought in the US for the 25 per cent price rise of maize and 17
per cent rise in soy beans last month, adding that a dry northern summer in Russia, Ukraine and
Kazakhstan lay behind the 25 per cent jump in the cost of wheat.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/world/droughts-prompt-warning-20120831255pz.html#ixzz25KpkiSZl