WRITTEN IN AUGUST 2009 FOR THE SYRIAN ENGLISH NEWSPAPER "BALADNA"
Nobel prize-winning physicist in
1997 and current US
energy secretary, Steven Chu, has a cheap and easy solution to fight climate
change. Paint the roofs white and drive "cool" cars on pale-coloured
roads.
These proposals were launched in London at the end of last may, in a climate
change symposium hosted by Prince Charles and attended by peace,
literature, chemistry and physics laureates among other outstanding
personalities.
Mr. Chu maintains that clean and pale colors,
reflects sunlight and would contribute to fight global warming. He also affirms
that if all surfaces around the world were white, it would be reached a Carbon
emissions reduction, equivalent to the total amount of emissions that could be
obtain if world traffic were forbidden for the next eleven years.
Scientific
explanation is based
on the capacity of painted surface in clean colors to reflects more solar radiation
to the space, and reduce at the same time, the quantity of energy needed for cooling buildings.
Mr. Chu recognizes being influenced by Art
Rosenfeld, member of the Energy Commission of California who was also inspired
by the traditional Mediterranean
architecture, with the terraces and buildings of the Balearic and
Greek islands and most of the countries surrounded by the Mediterranean
Sea.
Although this proposal is not very original, and
probably Mr. Chu or Mr. Rosenfeld are not trying to be specially innovators
with this, at least this has a lot of common sense. In this manner, we can find
solutions to climate problems that have always being there and are easy to put
into practice.
Considering climate change as a real and
unavoidable, and in order to face the challenges related, we could consider
this proposal as a good starting point for countries suffering extreme weather
conditions to think about which role they should take in order to adapt to
global warming. At this respect, Arab and Mediterranean countries has much to
say on the subject.
The international scientific community working in
the study of the adaptation process to environmental changes says that
societies have inherent capacities to adapt to climate change. In fact, human
adaptation to climate change has to be based in the combination of knowledge of
local systems and cultures, with the scientific knowledge.
Examples like white painted roofs can lead us to
analyze the history and culture of countries in the Arab and Mediterranean
Regions and how, in spite of weather conditions, they have achieve during the
centuries a high degree of adaptation and development that could be consider as
an example for other world regions that are starting to suffer an increasing
temperature.
However, experience, culture, or adaptative capacity has
nothing to do without coordination, awareness, open-mindedness or the capacity
to understand what climate change is. And, as one of the most important factor,
these capacities are bound up in the capacity to act collectively. So, two
critical needs in the region are political will for environmental legislation,
and the urgency for integrated action among academics, activists, and
policy-makers as said Dr. Nadim Farajalla of the American University
of Beirut (AUB), faculty director of the new Research and Policy Forum on
Climate Change and the Environment in the Arab World.
Thus, Academic-Government-Civil interaction is critical to
achieve good policies, strengthen the political will to move in this direct,
and learn and implement the societal and cultural deep knowledge that has been
accumulated for centuries as some of our ancestors did when they decided to
paint their houses white.
