Global Environment, Environmental Crisis, And Global Economic Crisis

First Published Date : March 9, 2009 ADawnJournal.com

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has warned new US president Barack Obama that the current global economic crisis must not distract people from looking to take steps in avoiding climate change. The warning comes as Obama meets Blair’s successor Gordon Brown to discuss solutions to the economic situation, and brings into sharp focus the potential dangers of taking one’s eye of the ball when it comes to environmental matters – a potential and natural reaction to the high priority that is being placed on the financial crisis. The message from Tony Blair is that, economic crisis or no economic crisis, there are still issues that need to be addressed with real urgency where environmental concerns are at issue.

In Blair’s view, some people are of the opinion that due to the economic turmoil, the environmental crisis that we could be facing needs to take a back seat, but in his words “either the climate is changing or it is not”. And, with the scientific consensus on the matter saying that it is incontrovertibly the case that climate change is a reality, we cannot simply turn our backs on environmental issues. If we are to do that, not only will the environmental crisis multiply, but it will have very real knock-on effects on the economic situation too. As a consequence, it is important that we concentrate equally on facing down the two major crises of our time – the global environment and the global economy.

Mr Blair has welcomed the fact that in Mr. Obama’s recently-passed economic stimulus plan are contained incentives to use cleaner, renewable sources of energy. This is a sound effort to ensure that, rather than take one crisis as a priority and ignore the other, both problems can be tackled as a joint effort. With the expense that is involved in relying on fossil fuels – a situation that makes the global oil market an ever thornier problem – to concentrate on looking at alternative energy and greater energy efficiency makes more sense than ever. This is something that seems to set Obama apart from his predecessor George W Bush, who was viewed by many as a climate change sceptic, and viewed the scientific consensus as being misleading.

With the economic crisis still possessing a very firm grip on many of the world’s leading economies, there will continue to be stimulus and bailout plans to try and bring it into line. Mr. Blair’s words to Mr. Obama seem to be a warning to avoid economic expediency taking hold at the expense of environmentally sound plans. With Mr. Obama having taken great care in selecting his cabinet and his advisers, it does seem that this warning is not one that will fall on deaf ears. A continuing focus on matters environmental is both essential and likely, but it is not a battle that will be won any time soon, and one which will depend on continued monitoring. This is an issue that we will continue to read about for a long time to come.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Thegreenlivingblog.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to A Dawn Journal. This article originally published on the above website on Mar 9, 2009.

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