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In 1998, for example, 1998 gave us Hurricane Mitch hit Central America and we also
suffered raging forest fires, torrential rains and mudslides, floods and droughts. The
following year was no better, with severe flooding in Venezuela and savage storms in
France that left 2 million homes without power. Another measure of nature’s increased
violence is that four times as many people now die each year in natural disasters as in
all war and civil disturbances combined. 6 Some 85 per cent of all insurance payments
worldwide now compensate for natural disasters. 7
A combination of climate change and deforestation is blamed for these problems.
Environmentalist Donella Meadows said in 1999 that the most striking evidence is
coming from nature itself. People may be in denial, but ‘plants and critters are noticing
changes and trying to respond’. 8
Global warming is caused by the greenhouse effect, which is a direct consequence
of the increased burning of fossil fuels – mostly by industry – and further exacerbated
by deforestation. As the planet warms up, so weather systems change and climatic
disasters and extremes occur on a more regular basis.
Those who doubt global warming are having a harder and harder time
summoning contrary evidence, as glaciers melt and the Antarctic ice shelves fracture.
In 1998 the global temperature record was broken by almost half a degree Fahrenheit,
which in climate terms is a huge leap. And in August 2003, Britain had its first
temperature reading in excess of 100˚F (37.7˚C). According to the Worldwatch Institute
in its January 2000 report, rising temperatures are melting glaciers from the Peruvian
Andes to the Swiss Alps. 9
The United Nations Environmental Agency has declared that it is now too late to
halt global warming and that time is fast running out to prevent other environmental
catastrophes. Klaus Toepfer, head of the UN environmental programme, warns that
emissions of the greenhouse gases, which cause global warming, have quadrupled
since the 1950s, and that the rate at which humans are destroying the environment is