Glacial Loss Moving So Quickly In Peru That Most Will Likely Vanish By 2015 - Guardian

[hatrack]

Glaciers in Peru are melting so quickly that by 2015 almost all of them may have disappeared. This is not just a problem for Peru but for the whole Andean Community of Nations, including Bolivia, Colombia and Ecuador. These countries generate around 73% of their electricity from hydro energy. Ironically, this renewable source of energy risks disappearing because of melting glaciers caused by climate change.

The report, Climate change knows no borders, provides a chilling reminder of the catastrophic impacts of climate change on the Andean region. The evidence predicting the rapid loss of glaciers and a fiercer, more frequent El Niño effect, where ocean temperatures rise along the coasts of Ecuador and Peru, causing droughts and floods, reveals an uncertain and potentially destructive future for the region. The El Niño of 1997/8 had a devastating impact, leaving thousands dead or homeless, crops ruined, roads and bridges left smashed. The bill ran into billions of dollars.

If this wasn't enough, climate change could lead to further losses of up to $30 billion a year by 2025 in the Andean region while the effect of melting glaciers could place 40 million people at risk of losing their water supply.

EDIT

Peru did not establish a ministry for the environment until May 2008, exposing a pattern played out regionally of weak state institutions, unequal access to natural resources, a lack of political will, non-existent funding, insufficient information and deficient infrastructure. The challenge of integrating development and climate change agendas is, therefore, critical.

EDIT

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/13/climatechange.colombia

[sui generis]

1. We still refuse to believe what is about to happen

Some crazy bit of optimism is hoping for a miracle, but the fact that we are not facing is that we ARE going to have a massive die-back and it's going to hit the people on the fringes in the poorest nations the hardest.

At this point there really is nothing but a Hail Mary from the universe that's going to reverse deglaciation, and once it's gone it's going to take a mini-ice age to put the glaciers back.

So why aren't governments preparing to deal with the inevitable instead of wasting their time pointing fingers? At this point, it's everyone's problem.

[phantom power]

2. Because they refuse to believe.

[pscot]

3. A hail Mary from the Universe

Now there's a notion you could build a cult around. I can already see believers by the thousands, in procession, flogging themselves through the streets.