The evidence is right before us: huge ice sheets the size of France breaking away from the Antarctic ice mass and floating into warmer waters to melt away. Polar bears in the Arctic go hungry for longer and longer periods because the ice on which their main prey, seals, come to rest and have their pups is shrinking. Countries made up of small dots of land only a few metres above sea level in the Pacific and Indian Oceans fearing they will soon be swamped as the oceans rise. The Sahara desert creeping outward and engulfing huge new swaths of land.

Countless eons elapsed before the world’s population hit the one-billion mark in 1804. In just 123 more years, the population doubled – in 1927 – and 32 years further on, it grew to three billion in 1959. Right now, 6.8 billion of us inhabit the earth and UN population specialists expect that number to grow to nine billion by 2040.

That rapid growth of human population, in addition to the activities we pursue, are the main reasons for the inexorable warming of the atmosphere, producing undesirable results. Since the world’s population surpassed one billion, industrial activity which began with manifold inventions and processes in Europe – notably Britain and Germany – has multiplied the production of so-called greenhouse gases from the factory chimneys and smokestacks which became the emblems of progress.

Those gases – notably carbon dioxide, methane, oxides of nitrogen and sulphur compounds – are produced both by industrial and agricultural activity. Carbon dioxide is a natural by-product of the breathing of human beings and animals. We inhale air into our lungs and extract oxygen from it, while releasing carbon dioxide produced when cells do their work.

Methane comes from rotting garbage in landfills, from decaying manure and as emissions from both ends of grazing animals like cattle and sheep. Most of it comes as they belch when they regurgitate cud from their stomachs. Decaying manure also produces nitrous oxide. When the population was in balance with the earth’s natural vegetation, there was no problem, since plants feed on carbon dioxide, and release oxygen as a by-product. But as we cut down trees in large numbers, we produce a double whammy in reducing the capacity of the vegetable cover to soak up the CO2, and in burning the wood and allowing it to rot releases even more of the gas.

As we pour more CO2 and other gases into the atmosphere, they act like the glass in a greenhouse and actually trap the sun’s heat. Over time, the temperature of the atmosphere goes up. Another side effect of an increase in the level of CO2 is to make sea water more acidic, killing off many of the small organisms upon which all sea life ultimately depends.

Scientists around the world have been tracing and observing these phenomena for years, and they have become increasingly concerned about the effect we are having on our planet. In recent years they have been able to persuade politicians and policymakers to take notice. Concerted international focus began in 1972 when 114 nations met in Stockholm, Sweden, under the aegis of the United Nations. Out of this grew the UN Environment Programme and a follow-up conference in Rio de Janeiro 20 years later. Twelve years ago the world’s nations met in the Japanese city of Kyoto to come up with a plan to attack the problem of global warming.

The Kyoto Protocol requires 37 industrial countries to commit themselves by 2012 to reducing emissions of a group of harmful gases compared to the amount produced in 1990. So far, 187 countries have signed and ratified the protocol, but the most notable holdout is the United States, which was responsible for 36 per cent of the gases produced in the base year. The protocol required that the industrial countries bear the burden of the corrective measures as they were the primary producers of pollutants since the onset of the industrial revolution. So far, precious little of that has been realised.

Now, as you read this, some 15,000 politicians, bureaucrats, journalists and protesters from around the world – equivalent to the population of Mannings Hill, Havendale and Meadowbrook – are camping in Copenhagen, Denmark. They are halfway through yet another UN conference on climate change.

On one thing they all agree – all of us, the people who populate the world, cannot continue indefinitely with our present way of life, as the planet will not be able to sustain it for much longer. Apart from that, there is very little they agree on.

There are all manner of proposals on how to attack the problem, but when the conference adjourns next Friday they will have little to show for their efforts. Oh sure, there will be a communiqué, there will be a huge document of 200 or so pages calling on governments to do this and that, and everybody will go home and continue business as usual.

In Copenhagen, the ugly divide between the rich and poor countries is on display. It now appears that the conference document will incorporate much of the Kyoto Protocol. The problem is how to work out an agreement that engages all countries in combating global warming until the next benchmark, 2020. Many rich countries favour a single document to supersede the Kyoto agreement. The poor ones prefer a two-pronged approach: retain the Kyoto Protocol with deep cuts to emissions for the rich and a new, less binding accord for the poor.

What bothers the poor countries is that while they are responsible for only a small part of the industrial pollution which caused the problem, they face the most suffering from the effects. An example: Africa south of the Sahara has only 12 per cent of the world’s population and produces only two per cent of greenhouse gases. Yet as the climate grows warmer, it is that region which will face the greatest suffering from drought, floods and food shortages and is the least equipped to deal with those crises.

It will take all the skill and persuasiveness of the senior leaders who will descend on the conference before it closes, as well as lots of goodwill on the part of the biggest polluters, including the United States and China, to come up with a satisfactory outcome. A metaphor for the dilemma is a statue in Copenhagen harbour clearly visible to all the delegates. Titled “The Survival of the Fattest”, it depicts an obese, obviously Caucasian man sitting on the back of a thin, worn-out African man.

For all the cynicism, disagreement, disbelief and dissembling at work, the very fact that the countries of the world have agreed to address the problem indicates that there is an understanding, however grudging, that business as usual is not an option. They recognise, however dimly, that we cannot continue to dig oil, coal, peat and natural gas from the ground, cut down trees and burn them to power our factories, houses, buildings, cars, trucks, ships, trains and planes.

We have to devise a new way to conduct our lives – a simpler, more benign method with a much lower impact on the environment. Otherwise, our grandchildren will find themselves in a much harsher, much less enjoyable world than the one we found when we got here.

keeble.mack@sympatico.ca