The Earth's climate system is only two or three decades from passing the point of no return but there are a number of solutions that can keep the damage from getting worse, a leading environmentalist has concluded in his new book.
Tim Flannery, an eco-activist who rose to prominence with his first book "The Weather Makers," says in his new book that climate change is the most urgent challenge in our quest for sustainability but that there are three potential solutions.
In an interview with CTV's Canada AM on Wednesday, Flannery discussed his book "Now or Never" and said scientists need to remain optimistic despite the gloomy predicament climate change imposes.
"The issues are serious and the time is so short. If you despaired I don't know if you'd ever get out of bed in the morning," he said. "We have also made significant progress and we can't lose sight of that. Everything still hangs in the balance but we all live in hope."
One of the solutions that the book proposes involves using the Internet to combine Old and New World methods to help improve our efforts to be sustainable.
Flannery uses forestry as an example where technology could improve the public's efforts. He noted that by 2030, it is expected that 80 per cent of the world's tropical forests will have vanished.
He said he would want to set up an online auction system that is similar to eBay in small villages in developing countries. Tropical farmers versed in sustainable practices could use the service as a market to solicit financial support from the international community to help them preserve the rainforest.
The program would allow everyone, from the school system to the business community, to help with preservation efforts, he said.
"People have been stumbling around trying to work out how we can preserve these vital forests," he told Canada AM in Toronto. "They're just so essential to the world's climate system. People have been talking about government to government transfers. That stuff is never going to work because the money never gets to the village level."
Flannery also discusses an idea first proposed by Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen in which the world's jet fleet would fly across the skies at the same time to release sulfur in the stratosphere -- a move he calls "global dimming."
The strategy would work to lower the Earth's temperature. He said the move would be worth exploring in a crisis despite the fact that it could pose serious risks, including changing the colour of the sky forever.
"Hopefully we never have to make that decision but it's important that we discuss it now because if we are faced with it and it comes out of the blue, we'll never get an agreement for it to go ahead," he said. "People need to understand what's at stake, what the back up plan is."
In the book, Flannery also discusses what he calls a "drastic change in energy use" that will eliminate pollution from the air by using the tools that are already at our disposal.
He repeats his earlier views that coal energy stations are one of the biggest problems of climate change.
"The world and China in particular has gone so far down the road of using coal as an energy source that we have little choice but to pursue a solution that involves it," he says in his book.
However, he does say China has become a good example of leadership in the combat against climate change and called on countries like Australia and Canada to embrace a "new energy economy."
"If we don't move fast enough, we're going to find ourselves buying intellectual property from China 10 years from now," he said.
Flannery, an academic who hails from Australia, was named Australian of the year in 2007 for raising awareness on environmental issues. His book "The Weather Makers" won international acclaim and is credited for making the Australian government change its environmental policies.
