Background Information: General Changes in Daily Lives

Changes in our daily lives mainly depend on where we live and work. Building styles, working conditions, use of water, energy resources, crops, and leisure activities will need to be shaped to take advantage of the prevailing climate, seasonal changes, and weather.

We may need to be more efficient with the energy we use at home. On the one hand, winters will be milder and we shall use less energy for heating in some places. On the other, we may need to use more energy for air conditioning. However, can air conditioning and refrigeration be achieved in a greenhouse-friendly manner? Car air conditioners will also be more desirable with temperature and humidity increases.

We may also expect to use solar power for heating/cooling for the home and water heating. But, if cloudiness increases, using solar energy may not be effective.

Cars and small trucks may be the biggest transportation oil users, and transportation accounts for 33 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions. It is expected that there will be changes in the way we travel and the way goods are transported. There may also be changes in packaging materials as industries use less plastics and more biodegradable materials.

Parks, roadways, farms, and public areas will be greener as we plant more trees to help compensate for carbon dioxide release. We may recycle materials more and do less burning, affecting agricultural practices in some cases. There may be changes in living areas with relocation of people affected by rising sea level, degradation of fresh water supplies, coastal erosion, some farming areas becoming uneconomical, and other areas experiencing an upsurge in activity. The cost of disaster relief may place a bigger financial responsibility on all of us.

Changes in temperature and rainfall patterns as well as wind strengths and relative humidity could influence playing seasons and conditions of sports. Southward penetration of mosquito-borne diseases and lengthened seasons during which they are a problem could influence when and where sports are played outdoors. Yet with temperatures rising and the prospect of milder winters, we may wish to spend more time outdoors.

Growing Public Concerns

The debate over human impacts on the environment, media exposure of the threat to nonrenewable resources, and predictions of impending climatic change all contribute to our understanding about the dangers of a short-term approach to development. We now realize that the temptation to take shortcuts encourages us to exploit resources and to pollute the air, land, and water, all of which may be convenient at the time but not be worth the long-term damage done to the quality of our daily lives and our environment.

Increasingly, public concern for the future of our planet will no doubt lead to wiser practices, favoring those who undertake long-term planning in preference to the pursuit of short-term gains. A lack of scientific background is felt by the majority of people attempting to understand the scientific debate; this applies also to specialist scientists. Having been alerted to the problem, the public now wishes to understand more about the scientific predictions about the climate changes due to the greenhouse effect, and so have the opportunity to contribute to future planning and policy making.

As a result, the general public is looking to the scientific community for balanced, objective information. Institutes involved in climate change and sea level research are already swamped with requests to provide easily understood, up to date information. Clearly, this will be an ongoing need for which staff will need to be provided.

The public debate is now moving so fast that there is a distinct possibility that people will become frustrated by the apparently slow progress into climate change research. There is likely to be public demand for a clear solution to the problem as well. Responsibility for tackling the problem includes finding ways to limit the use of fossil fuels and emissions of greenhouse gases. It is also necessary to help developing countries to find ways of raising their standard of living without increasing the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Ultimately, the whole world will have to tackle the population growth issue.

There are no easy solutions. In earlier modules, we have seen that attempts to cure an environmental problem tend simply to shift that problem to another area. The apparent solution often means that an equally undesirable and new problem has been created elsewhere. Even so, the lesson to be learned is that measures to mitigate the threat of global warming cannot be achieved without inconvenience and sometimes even pain. The nature of human society is such that to face unpleasant restrictions is most difficult, and the nature of government is such that to insist that the general public observe unpopular measures requires brave decisions which threaten to be politically unfortunate.

Impact on Agriculture and Farmers

Agriculture is the most important means of livelihood for most Pacific Islanders. In most island nations, a large percentage of economically active people are subsistence farmers working on the land. For example, in Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Kiribati and Tuvalu, between 70 and 80 percent of the working-age population are involved in agriculture. For all these people, survival depends on their ability to grow their own food.

For nearly all Pacific nations, agricultural products make up the majority of their exports. Without these exports, whole economies would suffer. For the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Samoa, the principal revenue earner is copra or coconut oil. Fiji depends upon sugar cane. Tonga depends upon squash pumpkins and vanilla.

For the above reasons, it is very important to consider how the anticipated climatic changes in the Pacific threaten to affect agriculture.

Following the present trends, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is expected to reach double the concentration which existed in the pre-industrial era (starting about the year 1750) by the end of the twenty-first century. The likely effects on climate of this increase, together with parallel increase of other greenhouse gases, are as follows:

A "best estimate" of the increase to be expected in global mean surface temperature is suggested to be of about 2 degrees Celsius by the year 2100, and already the seeds are in place for a continued increase in temperature even if the concentrations of greenhouse gases have been stabilized by that date. Although this may seem to be a small change of temperature, given daily oscillations, this increase has been stated in some circles to be comparable with the greatest change that has been seen in the last 10,000 years.

The "best estimate" of sea level rise is stated to be about 50 centimeters from the present to the year 2100, and again sea level will continue to rise, even given the stabilization of greenhouse gas emissions by that date.

Confidence is greater in the implications of climate change in the large scale (hemispheric to continental scale). Current regional projections carry less weight. It is difficult, therefore, to focus upon the Pacific region.

It is anticipated that there will be a greater surface warming of the land than of the ocean in winter leading to increased winter rains. However in general, there is less certainty over projections of change to the hydrological cycle. More recent consideration of the role of anthropogenic aerosols has moderated earlier forecasts of increased precipitation and soil moisture, even suggesting that monsoon precipitation may well decrease. Again, the more simplistic early assessment, which forecasts a more vigorous hydrological cycle resulting from increased temperature gradients and translated this process into a scenario which might see more severe droughts and floods in some locations with the opposite effect in others, has given way to a more cautious view. Although several models indicate an increase in precipitation intensity and more extreme rainfall events, it is now suggested that there is insufficient knowledge to support forecasts of greater frequency and geographical distribution of severe storms

From the latter observation, what is now implied is that we cannot assume that the Pacific Islands will suffer from tropical cyclones of greater strength and frequency as was earlier suggested. Although, global warming is most likely to see a latitudinal change in the cyclone zones.

Consequently, as more and more research is conducted into the physics of climate change, the emerging picture is not significantly clearer than before. Caution is still advised with the growing recognition that there is still much to be learned.

Although there is a great uncertainty among scientists as to what the future holds, the likely effects of these climate changes on agriculture can be summarized as follows:

The very gradual rise in temperature could well cause a general increase in crop yields in Tropical Pacific islands. However, if there are more catastrophic events (droughts and cyclones) than at present, the loss of crops that currently occurs every few years in a particular island could occur more frequently.

The effects of climatic change are likely to be both positive and negative, and each will have a moderating effect upon the other.