Chapter 12
The global village
The preceding chapters have considered the various strands of the global
warming story and the action that should be taken. In this last chapter
I want first to present some of the challenges of global warming, espe-
cially those which arise because of its global nature. I then want to put
global warming in the context of other major global problems faced by
humankind.
The challenges of global warming
We have noted in the course of our discussion that global warming is not
the only environmental problem. For instance, coastal regions are liable to
subsidence for other reasons; water supplies in many places are already
being depleted faster than they are being replenished and agricultural
land is being lost through soil erosion. Many other reasons, locally and re-
gionally, could be listed for the occurrence of environmental degradation.
However, the importance of global warming is not diminished by the ex-
istence of these other environmental problems; in fact their existence will
generally exacerbate its effects – as, for instance, we noted on page 150
when looking at the effect of sea level rise on Bangladesh.It is generally
beneficial to tackle all related environmental problems together.
Local degradation of the environment is generally the result of par-
ticular action in the locality. To give an example, subsidence occurs
because of the over-extraction of groundwater. In these cases the com-
munity where the malpractice is occurring suffers the damage that it
causes and the principle that polluters should pay the cost of their pol-
lution is relatively easy to apply.
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