MEDIA ALERT
BBC Ignores Climate Change In Reporting New Disaster Fund
December 28, 2001
The
BBC reported today that the British Red Cross has launched a rapid response
disaster fund to allow it to aid people in stricken areas as quickly as
possible, such as flood victims in Mozambique. On the flagship BBC Radio 4
'Today' programme, David Loyn, the BBC's 'developing world correspondent', said
that 'mounting disasters' and images of suffering since September 11 had raised
public awareness of the need for a fund to cover all disasters, rather than just
specific ones [December 28, 2001]. But there was no mention of climate change in
his report - the
greatest environmental threat today, particularly in many regions of the
developing world. The BBC's online report suffers the same serious omission
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_1731000/1731245.stm].
We have already seen devastating loss of life and property in severe weather events
that are arguably related to human-caused climate change. In 1998, hurricane Mitch
caused the deaths of more than 11,000 people in central America. In 1999, a devastating
cyclone hit Orissa, India - the worst in 30 years - leaving around 10,000 people
dead. In the same year, 20,000 people were killed in floods in Venezuela. Two
months later, severe flooding and a wave of tropical cyclones left Mozambique
and Madagascar struggling to cope, with hundreds of thousands made homeless.
According to climate scientist Mike Hulme of the University of East Anglia, we are already
in a new climate regime that has been 'tainted' by industrial society. ‘There is
no longer such a thing’, says Dr Hulme, ‘as a purely natural weather event’
[The Guardian, 15 March,
2000].
The authoritative
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), comprising more than 2500
climate scientists and related experts, has warned that 'climate change is
likely to have wide ranging and mostly adverse impacts on human health with
significant loss of life'. The
respected London-based Global Commons Institute estimates that there will be
more than two million deaths from climate change-related disasters worldwide in
the first decade of the twenty-first century. Damage to property will amount to
hundreds of billions of dollars. [Global
Commons Institute, letter to The Guardian, 14 March, 2000. Full text of
letter available athttp://www.gci.org.uk/signon/signon.html#Guardian]
IPCC scientists completed their Third Assessment Report on climate change in January
2001. The main new finding was deeply disturbing: that the atmosphere could warm
at twice the rate anticipated in their previous report of 1996. This could mean
global temperature rises by 2100 - in the worst-case scenario - of almost
6oC. The predicted range of temperature rise of 1.4o to
5.8 oC was described by the IPCC as 'potentially devastating'.
Michael McCarthy, The Independent’s environment correspondent, remarked
of the new findings on high temperature rises: ‘This implies absolute disaster
for billions of people’ [The Independent, 14 November,
2000].
SUGGESTED ACTION
Write to David Loyn (david.loyn@bbc.co.uk) and ask him why he did not mention the threat of human-caused
climate change in his report. Ask him to address this threat more fully in
future reporting; in particular, you could ask him to investigate the 'climate
debt' owed to countries in the poor South by the rich North (see http://www.gci.org.uk/signon/indlet.html for
more details on this serious and under-reported issue).
Cc: your email to Rod Liddle, the editor of Today (rod.liddle@bbc.co.uk).
You could also email the feedback contact for the BBC's online news
pages: newsonline@bbc.co.uk
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