Film's climate change only too real, warns Greenpeace

The upcoming film The Day after Tomorrow may be a work of fiction but its subject matter - climate change and its dangers - is a fact, Greenpeace warned yesterday.

Robert Emmerich's mega-production takes a big-budget, special-effects-filled look at what the world would look like if the greenhouse effect and global warming accelerated to result in sudden world-wide catastrophe and disaster, including multiple hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, tidal waves, floods and the beginning of the next Ice Age.

In a statement issued yesterday, Greenpeace said that extreme weather events were already showing the first consequences of climate change in our lifetime.

"The big drought in the south of France, the forest fires in Portugal and huge floods in Germany, all in 2003, are not fiction - they actually happened. Thousands suffered loss of life and property. Since 1979, 20 per cent of the ice cap in the North Pole has melted away and the recent Nature magazine report shows that up to one million species are under threat of extinction by 2050 due to accelerating climate change," Greenpeace said.

"While the works of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) may not read like a Hollywood script, the predictions are far more frightening than anything Hollywood has to offer: millions of environmental refugees, lost habitats, extinct species, growing food and water shortages," said Anne Muscat Scerri, campaign director for Greenpeace Mediterranean.

"Climate change is occurring because we use fossil fuels - oil, coal and gas. When these fuels are burned, they release carbon dioxide (CO2), a so-called 'greenhouse gas' that causes the earth to warm.

"What we need to do immediately is to shift to renewable energy resources. They do not pollute, they do not run out and they can be cost-effective," said Ms Scerri.

Greenpeace said that world governments can start setting targets next week. "Eighty five world leaders are being invited for the first time to attend an international Renewables Conference, to be held in Bonn between June 1-4. Greenpeace calls upon all world leaders to attend this conference and to adopt firm commitments to provide a minimum 20 per cent of our power from clean sources by 2020."