Transcript of contribution to the series Deadline 2000, written and presented by Mick Kelly, produced by Footprint Productions for Channel 4 TV, and broadcast May 26th 1998.
It is now 100 years since scientists first warned that burning coal could lead to global warming. It is 10 years since the nations of the world decided to take the issue of climate change seriously.
Since the Industrial Revolution, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased by 25%, and half that rise - a staggering amount - has occurred since the 1950s. The temperature of the planet has warmed by around half a degree Celsius over the past 100 years and five of the warmest years on record have occurred over the past 10 years. That warming rate may accelerate five-fold over the next few decades as we continue to pollute the atmosphere.
So how far have we gone in dealing with one of the major environmental crises of the late 20th century?
The good news is that we now have a climate treaty - the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. This commits the nations of the world to limit their emissions of dangerous 'greenhouse' gases. The bad news is that many of the industrialised nations are going to fail to meet the initial round of targets of stabilising their emissions by the year 2000.
Historically, the bulk of 'greenhouse' gas emissions have been the responsibility of the major industrialised nations. I emit five times more carbon dioxide in a year than the average inhabitant of China and 50 times more than the typical Kenyan, and this is why the climate treaty insists that it is the major industrialised nations that must bear the brunt of the first round of emission controls.
But the situation is set to change. By some time in the 21st century the nations of the Third World are likely to be emitting more pollution than those in the North, intensifying the heat trap as they adopt the trappings of modern civilisation. We can't ask them to stop, but we can support their efforts to adopt clean technology, to climate-proof their development plans.
We face a stark choice: we can take concerted action to curb global warming, change our lifestyles, and pressure governments to take further action, or we can do nothing. But if we do nothing we have to face the consequences. We will be staggering from one climate crisis to the next. That is the challenge that global warming presents.