One Degree Matters

Source

Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/8119882

<iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/8119882?title=0&amp;byline=0&amp;portrait=0" width="400" height="225" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe><p><a href="http://vimeo.com/8119882">One degree matters — Full movie</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user2742751">European Environment Agency</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>

One degree warmer sounds like nothing, and if you’re in New York or Copenhagen or anywhere where its winter now, it sounds absolutely pathetic. One? Turn that global warmer up by eleven, carbon-spewing industrial sources!

But a new film, One Degree Matters, which had its premiere on Sunday during the Copenhagen climate change conference, explains why, well, one degree matters. And not in a good way.

The film’s what An Inconvenient Truth would have been if Al Gore were Scandanavian. The day after its premiere, Gore spoke at the Copenhagen climate change summit about the implications of a failure to prevent climate change. He may have gotten hammered on his claim that the arctic ice could be gone in 7 years, but no one disputes the evidence that the arctic is melting, and fast. While average global temperatures have increased by 1.3F in the past century, the mercury has risen at least twice as quickly in the Arctic, where thick year-round ice has given way to thin seasonal ice. In the summer of 2007, the Arctic ice cap dwindled to a record low minimum extent of 1.7 million square miles in September. The melting in 2008 and 2009 was not as extensive, but still ranked as the second and third greatest decreases on record. While melting arctic ice won’t raise sea levels, it will mean the loss of the reflective effect it provides, sending the suns rays back into space.

Given the current proposals of individual countries for their own actions to fight climate change, temperature is expected to increase approximately 6.8F by the end of the century, say scientists. To keep global warming from unleashing total havoc on our planet, we need to keep temperature rise under 2 degrees C. But this week the African nations have started to demand that that figure be adjusted. Lumumba Di-Aping, the Sudanese chairman of the group of 132 developing countries said recently, “Two degrees is a certain death for Africa.”

“There is unequivocal support for Africa,” was how Artur Runge-Metzger, the European Commission negotiator, retorted. “Of course, Ambassador Lumumba is not part of that because he lives in New York, but those people that live in Africa know the intention of the EU.”

Whatever that intention is, at least Europe knows what could happen if no one acts upon it.

The entire film, produced by the European Environment Agency, is viewable above.