Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
old-growth deforestation, topsoil losses and desertification, endocrine disruption,
incessant development, and so on, are made to appear secondary and more
forgiving by comparison with 'dangerous anthropogenic interference' with the
climate system.
(Crist, 2007: 35-6)
Instead of swapping the
Holocene
for the
Anthropocene
, Crist suggests that it is
probably wiser and more appropriate to use the term developed by the biologist,
E.O.Wilson. We have now entered the
Eremozoic Era
- the Era of Loneliness and
Loss rendered vividly by so many apocalyptic science fiction novels over the past
four decades. However, Crist (2007: 55) concludes: 'this civilization is not beyond
the reaches of radical action - and it is certainly not beyond the reaches of radical
critique'.
Box 3.1
From the Arctic to the Pacific islands of Tuvalu
The National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Boulder, Colorado (USA) revealed that
sea ice in the Arctic shrank by 18 per cent more in 2012 than it had the worse
previous, 2007, to just 3.41m sq km. The Nobel Prize-winning climate scientist Michael
Mann of Penn State University told
The Guardian
newspaper:
We know Arctic sea ice is declining faster than the models predict. When you
look at the major Greenland and the west Antarctic ice sheets, which are critical
from the standpoint of sea level rise, once they begin to melt we really start to
see sea level rises accelerate. The models have typically predicted that will not
happen for decades but the measurements that are coming in tell us it is already
happening so once again we are decades ahead of schedule. Island nations
that have considered the possibility of evacuation at some point, like Tuvalu,
may have to be contending those sort of decisions within the matter of a decade
or so. Thousands of years of culture is at risk of disappearing as the populations
of vulnerable island states have no place to go. For these people, current sea
levels are already representative of dangerous anthropogenic interference because
they will lose their world far before the rest of us suffer.
At their highest point Tuvalu is just 4.6m above sea level and is already experiencing
flooding, saltwater intrusion that affects drinking-water supplies and increased erosion.
In 2008 the Government and elders of Tuvalu held 'secret' talks with the Australian
Government about the possibilities of mass evacuation to Australia in future years.
New Zealand currently accepts about 75 Tuvalu islanders every year as part of a
Pacific Access Countries (Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Kiribati and Tuvalu) immigration quota
which the New Zealand government states in not linked to the islands' vulnerability
to the impact of climate change.
Source: adapted from Confino (2012) and Crouch (2008).
