By Klaus H Hemsath
Highly paid government bureaucrats will be descending in masses on Copenhagen in December of 2009. They all have instructions to defend the status quo and make sure that the world will follow the outdated and ineffective recommendations and provisions of the ill conceived Kyoto Protocol.
Only a few, if any, officials have any concept of the coming horrors that continuing overheating of our planet has in store for its trusting citizens.
For two centuries, coal has powered the rapid industrialization of many countries. These countries are enjoying the countless benefits and the increased wealth that advanced industrialization has bestowed on them.
Since the midst of the twentieth century, a potentially fatal flaw of accelerating industrialization has become visible. Planet Earth is heating up. This phenomenon was barely visible early on, but is now escalating at a quickening pace.
Physicists can easily explain this rather sudden rise in global temperatures. Oceans and lands were capable to originally absorb huge amounts of heat and carbon dioxide with only minor indications of global warming and acidification of surface waters.
This period is ending while combustion of fossil fuels is increasing at continuously accelerating rates, caused by the explosive growth of energy consumption across the world.
China has become the most prolific user of coal for generating electricity and for supplying energy to its extremely rapid and successful industrialization efforts. This growth will accelerate further. Other countries are following the example of China and are beginning to produce and import more and more energy for powering their quickly growing economies.
Europe and Japan have been trying to reduce energy use and limit greenhouse gas emissions. Such efforts are rarely successful in creating wealth and economic growth. Adhering to Kyoto Protocol provisions seldom makes economic sense.
Several countries may continue to follow Kyoto concepts. Others like the BRIC countries, made up of Brazil, Russia, India, and China, will be better off to abandon Kyoto and continue with their intensifying energy utilization. Following the axiom of "do as they do, not as they say", these countries are entitled to imitate highly industrialized and wealthier nations.
But will such advice not accelerate global warming even further? Yes it will. However, as long as the major industrial countries cannot find the will to stop fossil fuel burning altogether, it is hypocritical to prevent less fortunate countries from joining the establishment.
Instead, the most prosperous countries can and must be the first to establish a concept and a plan for saving Earth from continuous warming. World energy supplies must be changed completely from fossil fuels to renewable and economical energy sources. Otherwise, the Earth will overheat severely long before the end of the twenty first century.
The consequences of severe overheating will be devastating. Climates will change and will spawn more violent windstorms, more destructive floods, and more severe droughts. Most dangerous and most damaging will be the indefensible rise of sea levels. Low-lying coastal lands will be submerged, precious and irreplaceable infrastructures will disappear, and large populations will have to flee to higher grounds.
Does the world really have to watch helplessly as it is being destroyed by the greed and stupidity of its most powerful nations, its clueless corporations, and its powerless governments?
The world's most dominant economies, the USA and the European Union, have all the resources, the infrastructures, and the skilled workforces that must be mobilized to improve and deploy those advanced energy supply technologies, which can still rescue our Earth. A few, critical technologies are still missing but can be fully developed within one single decade.
World economies can continue their essential growth into the next century only, if the US and the EU decide to act decisively and soon.
It will be scandalous, shameful, and contemptible if the two, industrially most advanced, and wealthiest superpowers will wait for China to snatch the world from otherwise inevitable economic collapse.
It will be a moral disaster if the Earth's wealthiest nations cannot agree to leave a better world for future generations!
Dr. Hemsath's books, Climate Change-Gold Rush or Disaster? and Clean Energy For Centuries, offer a comprehensive plan for saving Earth from overheating. He is now writing a follow-on book, Petroleum Substitutes From Biomass. For fifty years he has worked on advanced energy technologies as scientist, engineer, inventor, Corporate R&D Executive, CEO, entrepreneur, and author. He holds more than 60 US Patents. Go to http://www.thermalexpert.com.
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