"Our Mode of Development Is Neither Sustainable Nor Replicable."
    By Cyril Da
    Le Nouvel Observateur

    Wednesday 11 October 2006

An interview with Laetitia de Marez, in charge of citizen mobilization projects against climate change for Greenpeace International.

    Have you seen Al Gore's film? Does it shed new light on or suggest new approaches in the struggle against climate change?

    There's not a lot in it that's new to me, but even if one knows the problem, one leaves the film deeply moved.

    Rather, it's a good condensation of all the certainties and uncertainties on the subject. Al Gore expounds the scientific consensus that is propounded by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) experts (rn: a group of climate change experts established by the UN). Many of the IPCC scientists are American. Their work shows ever more clearly that man is responsible for day after day climatic warming. And they find themselves out of step with the federal administration.

    The novelty of Al Gore's film is the defense of an American point of view on the question of this foretold catastrophe.

    Al Gore shows that our mode of development leads us to a catastrophe, that it is neither sustainable, nor replicable. By contrast, he demonstrates that we must stop selling this development mode to other countries and that a legitimate aspiration to better paths of growth exists.

    I hope that that will convey the idea that the United States - which is the greatest global polluter - is not monolithic, that American public opinion makers and a progressive fringe of the population want to go forward.

    Is the present climatic warming reversible, notably in the long term?

    Paleoclimatology allows us to go back 700,000 years, to see climatic variations through glacial cores. The present period is unheard of in terms of its scope and the acceleration of warming due to human activities.

    The phenomenon has been initiated; all that we can do now is contain it. Without going into details, scientists deem that animal species and human societies can tolerate a temperature increase of 2 C, starting from the pre-industrial era, the middle of the eighteenth century. We are presently at an increase of +0.6 C, a figure that will shortly be revised upwards.

    At 2 C over the average temperature, they consider that there is a threshold effect: species extinction, acceleration of glacier melting.

    And these phenomena are self-perpetuating: the melting of the permafrost releases methane, which in turn contributes to warming, etc.

    The objective is the stabilization of greenhouse gases between now and 2020, then a division by 2 from now until 2050, or, for industrialized countries, a division by four from now to 2050. For that to happen, we must act on production and energy consumption, to soberly use clean sources of energy. This division by four is not impossible. France commissioned a group of experts, who handed in their report October 9, and this objective is institutionalized.

    Under these conditions we may return to the anterior situation, but over several centuries, perhaps even over several millennia.

    Gorbachev at the Green Cross, Al Gore ... How should we interpret the fact that these political leaders don't seem to commit themselves to the environment effectively until they're out of power?

    They're probably less vulnerable to pressure from lobbies.

    But Al Gore's interest in the environment is not new: he's the one who negotiated the Kyoto Protocol for the United States, even if the Senate subsequently did not ratify it following a vast campaign by the petroleum industries.

    It's clear that Al Gore has more space; it's also a strategic goal: he felt that public opinion may swing. California's emissions reduction program and the opening of the biggest wind park in Texas are strong signals.

    It's also a way of opening the door in the United States at a time when Kyoto 2 is under negotiation.

    The film has, all the same, been seen by 2.5 million in the United States. It's a documentary that makes people want to do something when they leave the movie theater. The scope of the problem is Biblical, but if we all work on it, the solution will have the same scope.