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A convenient truth, sadly ignored

IF ALL goes well, in 2011, a year before the Kyoto protocol expires, a new opera will open at La Scala in Milan.It will be based on “An Inconvenient Truth”, the book and film about global warming by Al Gore, the former vice-president.It is easy to see the drama in the story of the failed American presidential candidate turned green crusader(although not in the thickets of statistics into which he sometimes strays).But whether the opera in Milan will end happily or tragically, the composer has not yet revealed.Does Mr Gore, armed with a PowerPoint presentation and mounted on a rickety mechanical ladder, put the sceptics and recalcitrants of climate change to rout? Or do the world's politicians ignore his song and allow timidity, suspicion and recrimination to vanquish the greater good?

In real life, the answer to those questions is being debated, amid negotiations over a replacement for the Kyoto treaty.Discuions are under way in Bonn and America's Congre right now(see article).The talks are due to culminate in a summit in Denmark next year.But already, the protagonists are blocking out their positions.Most developing countries are as one: almost all the greenhouse gases that have accumulated over the past two centuries, and are now heating up the planet, came from the chimneys and exhaust pipes of the rich world.What is more, each person in a rich country adds far more to the build-up than someone from a poorer country does.So, the likes of China and India conclude, the rich world must shoulder its responsibility for fixing the climate.Meanwhile, in America in particular, a chorus of leery politicians points out that China is now churning out greenhouse gases faster than any other country, even if its cumulative tally remains relatively low.Indonesia, India and Brazil are also prolific polluters.Emiions from developing countries are growing so fast that they are likely to swamp any reductions made by the rich world.So there is no point in America and other rich nations cleaning up their act unle rapidly industrialising countries do too.Inconveniently enough, both these arguments are valid.But so is another important and more encouraging observation.It is easier to affect emiions in poor countries, since such places tend to be le energy

efficient, to have adopted fewer measures for cutting pollution and to be installing more new capacity.That suggests there is a deal to be done.If the rich world agrees to pay for most of any reduction in the world's emiions, developing countries will allow the cuts to be made wherever they are cheapest.That, more or le, is the premise of the Kyoto protocol.Rich countries agreed to cut their emiions, or to pay for equivalent reductions elsewhere under a scheme known as the Clean Development Mechanism(CDM).In some ways, it has been a great succe.Eager Western bankers have spent billions of dollars capturing noxious gases, improving energy efficiency and building wind farms in developing countries.Nonethele, the scale of the investment remains groly inadequate.What is more, the scheme gives poor countries a reason to avoid any sort of climate-friendly regulation, including measures they could readily afford.Why spend money, when someone else will pay you to do it? Chinese refrigerant factories, for example, produce a lot of trifluoromethane, which is a potent greenhouse gas, but one that can be easily isolated and destroyed.Yet the government does not regulate the stuff, so that its makers can exploit the CDM to sign lucrative contracts, which the government then taxes heavily.Again, the outlines of a deal are clear.The rich world should agree to increase the flow of clean investment dramatically, in exchange for a promise from fast-growing developing countries to take some steps of their own to curb emiions.That should not be such a hard sell in China and India.After all, their governments are all too aware of the devastating consequences if global warming were to cause the Himalayan glaciers to melt, or crop yields to fall(see article).Moreover, Chinese and Indian firms, in particular, have become accustomed to the flow of funds from the CDM, and would be unhappy to see it evaporate.Western countries would benefit too, thanks to the lower cost of cutting emiions abroad.That is why the European Union allows international offsets to be used in its “cap-and-trade” scheme.In this, governments iue a set number of permits to produce greenhouse gases, obliging firms to cut their own emiions or buy spare permits from others.The cap-and-trade scheme that America's Senate began debating this week would also allow firms to fulfil some of their obligations through green investments in other countries.But the bill in Congre would allow only a small number of offsets, and only from factories that do not compete with American firms—a big hurdle in a globalised world.Worse, to make the bill more palatable to

China-bashing politicians, its authors have strengthened provisions that would impose tariffs on energy-intensive imports from countries that are not taking “comparable action” against climate change, meaning all developing countries.That is a recipe for a trade war, which would only compound the economic pain of global warming.Just when a deal is poible, the stage is being set for a tragedy of Wagnerian dimensions.Is it Getting Too Warm for Penguins?

King penguins are supposed to be a wildlife succe story.The flightle Antarctic bird — the second-biggest penguin after its movie-star emperor cousin — was hunted into near-extinction by sailors in the 19th century, who used their fat as cooking oil.When the slaughter ended — penguin fat no longer being the preferred way to simmer your cruise dinner — the penguin bounced back, and today numbers about 2 million.This is a healthy, robust species that sits near the top of the complex Antarctic food web.They may not stay that way much longer.A new report by French scientists in the Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences finds that king penguins could be wiped out over the coming decades due to global warming.Led by Yvon Le Maho, a physiologist at French National Center for Scientific Research, the team of researchers followed 456 adult birds with radio transponders implanted beneath their skin.Over an eight-year period, the researchers correlated survival rate to changes in sea surface temperatures, and found that in warm years, penguin chicks were le likely to survive the lean months of winter, because there wasn't sufficient fish to feed them.(Warmer temperatures seem to lower fish populations in the Southern Ocean, off Antarctica.)Adult survival rates dropped as well in warmer years.Ultimately, the scientists report that a 0.47 degree F increase in the temperature of the Southern Ocean — considerably below current forecasts for the next several decades — would reduce penguin numbers by 9%, enough to touch off a population collapse.“Our findings suggest that king penguin populations are at heavy extinction risk under the current global warming predictions,” the study's authors wrote.That's bad news for the penguins, and worse news for the rest of Antarctic wildlife.Sitting near the top of the food chain, the king penguins are useful markers for the health of the rest of the Antarctic ecosystem.If global warming means they're not getting enough food, the conditions below the penguins could be even worse.Temperature rise due to climate change is occurring quicker at the poles than the rest of the planet — on the Antarctic Peninsula, temperatures have risen five times faster than the global average over the past 50 years.Even if we can manage to slow the growth in carbon emiions, the poles will likely continue to warm.Though the species that have evolved to survive in harsh Antarctic conditions are necearily tough, they're also delicate.They're built for the snow and ice — change those conditions, and you take away their habitat and

their food supply.Extinction comes next, and nothing can stop it.The situation is no better in the Arctic north, where studies predict that polar bear populations will rapidly shrink over the coming decades, thanks again to warming.Environmentalists are preing the U.S.Fish and Wildlife Service to declare the polar bear threatened, which would make it the first species to be recognized as endangered specifically because of climate change.The government recently failed to meet a self-imposed deadline to make the decision by Feb.9, and the fate of the polar bear remains unclear.But if we fail to slow down the rate of warming, the polar regions as we know them will no longer exist — and poibly, neither will many of the species who live there now.温室下的企鹅将何去何从？

王企鹅成功地演绎了一个关于野生动物的故事。这种不会飞的南极鸟——仅次于它的影帝表兄，是世界上第二大的企鹅——在19世纪曾被水手们疯狂地猎杀 至灭绝的边缘，它们的脂肪被用于烹饪。当屠杀结束——企鹅油不再是慢火煨炖的邮轮晚餐的首选用油——企鹅的数量开始反弹，到今天它们的数量已经达到 2,000,000只。这个健康、强大的物种位于复杂的南极食物链的顶端。

这个状态可能不会保持很长时间。法国科学家在《自然科学研究会年报》中的最新报告指出，由于全球变暖，王企鹅可能会因此而在几十年内灭亡。在法国国 家科学研究中心生理学家Yvon Le Maho的带领下，一队研究学者在456只成年鸟的皮肤下植入无线电转发器，进行跟踪调查。在长达8年的时间里，研究者们调查了存活率与海洋表面温度的关 系。他们发现越来越暖和的这几年里，企鹅的幼仔们很难熬过缺乏食物的冬天，因为已经没有足够的鱼来喂养这些小可怜们。（越来越暖和的温度降低了南大洋的鱼 产量）成年企鹅的存活率也在这几年下降了。最后，科学家们的报告指出随着南大洋的水温上升0.47华氏温度——等同于目前对未来几十年的预测——企鹅的数 量会下降9%，这足以造成一个物种的崩溃。“我们的研究结果表明王企鹅在全球变暖的现状下，面临着灭绝的危险。”研究者在报告中写道。

这对企鹅们来说是个坏消息，而对于南极其他的野生动物来说也不见得多棒。位于食物链顶端的王企鹅为保证南极生态环境的健康做出了很大的贡献。如果全 球变暖意味着缺少足够的食物，这个现状对于企鹅来说更为严峻。由于气候变化造成的气温上升在极点的变化远比地球上其它地区要迅速得多——在南极半岛，在过 去的50年里，气温上升比全球的平均水平快5倍。即使我们减低碳排放的增长速度，极点依然有可能持续变暖。物种们通过进化来适应这条件恶劣的南极洲，这个 过程十分艰难，而它们是如此的脆弱。它们的生存条件就是雪和冰——改

变这些条件，相当于拿走了它们的栖息地和食物。灭绝就会在未来降临，这谁都阻止不了。

北极北部的情况不见得有多好，研究表明在未来的几十年，那里北极熊的数量会急速下降，这还是“归功于”全球变暖。环保人士在对美国鱼类及野生动物保 护委员会施加压力，以促成北极星灭绝的危险成功地得到申报。这样就可以让北极熊成为由于气温变化而被确认的第一批濒危物种。在2月9日的截止日期前，政府 并没有通过相关决议，因此北极熊的命运还未可知。但是如果我们没有减缓变暖的速度，我们所知的极地地区将不复存在——很可能，那些现在还生活于斯的动物们 也会消失。