Climate Change
Climate Change Affects Subterranean Ecosystems
A change in the quantity of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can also effect the biodiversity beneath our feet as plant roots then release different types and quantities of substances. Plants that grow well if more carbon dioxide is present in the atmosphere can, for example, suppress fungi better. This in turn has consequences for the other subterranean flora and fauna. Some soil organisms benefit from more carbon dioxide in the air, whereas others do not. The effects of climate change are not observed in soil outside of the root zone.
The Effects of Climate Change
Get Adobe Flash Player hereWorld failing on every environmental issue: an op-ed for Earth Day
The biodiversity crisis, the climate crisis, the deforestation crisis: we are living in an age when environmental issues have moved from regional problems to global ones. A generation or two before ours and one might speak of saving the beauty of Northern California; conserving a single species—say the white rhino—from extinction; or preserving an ecological region like the Amazon. That was a different age.
Today we speak of preserving world biodiversity, of saving the 'lungs of the planet', of mitigating global climate change. No longer are humans over-reaching in just one region, but we are overreaching the whole planet, stretching ecological systems to a breaking point. While we are aware of the issues that threaten the well-being of life on this planet, including our own, how are we progressing on solutions?
Although not a scientist, I have a relatively unique perspective, having spent the last three years as an environmental journalist, writing on a wide-variety of issues from species-on-the-brink to indigenous rights to climate change politics. As much as I have written, I have read exponentially more. Sometimes a working day as an environmental reporter can feel like watching a slow succumbing, an endless cataloguing toward the end of the world as we know it. I don't mean that the Earth will keel over and die—hardly. But the Earth may be very different in just a hundred years than the place we inherited: species are vanishing and ecosystems are being ravaged; humans are impacting everything from the deepest ocean to the most inaccessible mountain glaciers, from lion populations in East Africa to stringweed in the Galapagos, from the oceans' chemical make-up to the boreal forest's ability to sequester carbon.
Global Warming
Get Adobe Flash Player hereChaos and the Accord: Climate Change, Tropical Forests and REDD+ after Copenhagen
The Copenhagen Accord, forged at COP15 upended international efforts to confront climate change. Never before have 115 Heads of State gathered together at one time, let alone for the singular purpose of crafting a new climate change agreement.Even though the new Accord is still in intensive care, two things are already clear. First, we have entered an entirely new world. And second, tropical forests have the greatest potential to breathe life into the new agreement.
A New World
The old world, embodied by the Kyoto Protocol, was black and white. Only two types of countries existed – “developed” (wealthy) countries that agreed to cap their own greenhouse gases and “developing” countries that had no specific obligations to reduce emissions. Developing countries could however reduce their emissions and then sell UN-verified rights to emit, also know as carbon credits. The Kyoto Protocol capped emissions from developed countries and instituted a trading system in certified emissions reductions. All the accounting was monitored by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), its Secretariat, and its bodies.
