From the World Bank
commissioned report in 2009: “Public attitudes toward climate change: findings
from a multi-country poll”,comes this interesting look at country wide attitudes
to climate change.
is climate change a problem
So it's interesting to look at how these views affected country attitudes at
Durban recently.
It is pertinent to mention here that Asia has been worst hit by severe climate
change. Pakistan is one of the countries that have been severely hit in the
recent years by disastrous effects of climate change including flash floods and
devastating earthquakes.
“Developed nations are not guilty of causing the climate change that developing
nations claim they are suffering,” said Tom Harris, executive director of ICSC
which is headquartered in Ottawa, Canada. “Climate changes all the time—both
warming and cooling—due to natural causes and there is nothing that we can do to
stop it. However, to the degree possible, and considering our economic
circumstances, developed nations still have a moral obligation to devote a
proportion of their foreign aid to helping the world’s most vulnerable people
adapt to natural climate events.”
Human activities have caused the extinction of plants and animals at some
hundreds or thousands of times faster than what the natural rate would have been
as Mr. Kiyo Akasaka, Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public
Information, in the Japanese city of Kanazawa said.
"We cannot reverse extinction. We can, however, prevent future extinction of
other species right now. For the next 10 years our commitment to protecting more
than eight million species, and our wisdom in contributing to a balance of life,
will be put to a test," Mr. Kiyo Akasaka said.
Species can adapt to gradual changes in their environment through evolution, but
climate change often moves too quickly for them to do so. It’s not the absolute
temperature, then, but the rate of change that matters. Put simply, if climate
change is large enough, quick enough, and on a global scale, it can be the
perfect ingredient for a mass extinction.
We can’t tell the future of evolution, but we can look at the past for reference
points.