Have you heard about the term climate
change madness?
It was popularized by the head of the Philippines delegation, Yeb
Sano, who made international headlines
with his emotional speech at the opening session of the United Nations Climate
Change Conference in November
2013[1].
At the time of his speech, Super Typhoon Haiyan had just hit the Philippines
and caused catastrophic damage to the country. His speech brought tears to the eyes of many
of the delegates and was met with a standing ovation.
However,
emotions without actions mean little. At the end of 2016, 195 countries, including the US* and China, which are the two biggest carbon emitters, came together and signed
the Paris Agreement. This was the first time in history that countries around
the world had collectively agreed to undertake efforts to cut carbon emission
to keep the global temperature increase below 2 degree Celsius above
pre-industrial levels [2].
While carbon emission reduction can slow the pace
of global temperature increase, the earth will almost certainly become warmer[3].
Carbon emission reduction can only reduce the extent of temperature increase.
If carbon emissions were to reduce significantly,
the rise in the global average surface temperature could be limited to below 2
degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. This is
what the Paris Agreement is trying to achieve.
In short, whatever we do now, global warming is
bound to happen and it is going to negatively impact our lives, depending on
the extent of the temperature increase.
Generally, there are two aspects to tackling
climate change – adaptation and mitigation. Adaptation consists of taking steps
to reduce the impact of climate change while mitigation is related to taking
steps to reduce carbon emission, and hence the extent of global warming.
I shall discuss these two aspects in the
Malaysian context.
