EcoRadio

Category: Climate chaos

The atmosphere is to the earth as a layer of varnish is to a desktop globe. It is thin, fragile and essential for preserving the items on the surface.150 years of burning fossil fuel have overloaded the atmosphere to the point where the earth is ill. It now has a fever. Read the detailed article, Soothing Gaia’s Fever for an evocative account of that analogy. The items listed here detail progress on coordinating 6.5 billion people in the most critical project undertaken by humanity. 

  • Climate change is killing our people

     

    As the ground in the village remained flooded, there were a lot of mosquitoes around, and five of my family members became ill with malaria. Because there was no clean water to drink, some people got cholera and diarrhoea. Many of the people in my village died. Children didn’t go to school since they were too weakened by disease and their parents had no money for school fees.

    Our farms were ruined, so we didn’t have food until the government came to help us. This was so humiliating for us, because we had never depended on aid to survive.

    This year, when we managed to get seeds to plant for our own food, we were struck by a drought like we had never seen before. It was so hot, all of the crops dried up and the wells where we used to collect water also became dry. There was no water in the boreholes, and so the cycle of hunger and thirst returned, but this time caused by the excessive heat.

    We didn’t understand why this had happened. We wondered what we had done to make God so angry. But we now know it’s climate change. The cycle continues, and it hasn’t gotten much better, as we have had more droughts and more floods. It’s very hard for us to grow food, and some mornings, I go to my field only to find that someone has stolen the potatoes. Although it makes me angry, I know that if my neighbours didn’t steal the potatoes, they wouldn’t have anything to eat.

    When I heard that leaders of the world were meeting at the UN in New York to talk about fighting climate change, I wished that there was a way I could tell them what my community has gone through. I wanted to make them understand that we are getting poorer and poorer because of climate change, and we are dying. I wanted to be there to tell them our story.

    With Oxfam‘s help, I am have joined a number of women like me from different corners of the world in New York to speak my mind.

    I ask the leaders of the rich countries to take action to reduce their carbon emissions so that we can look forward to rains to plant our crops without having to face floods that wash them away. And I ask them to help my community fight the climate change that destroys our houses, increases diseases and stops our children from attending schools. That’s all I am asking for on behalf of my fellow villagers.

  • What we urgently need need is a new mindset on climate change

     

    The scientific evidence that global temperatures are rising and that man is responsible has been widely accepted since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report in 2007. There is now equally wide consensus that we need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to at most 50% of 1990 levels by 2050 if we are to have even a 50% chance of preventing temperatures from exceeding preindustrial levels by more than 2 degrees, considered by many to be the tipping point for catastrophic and irreversible climate change.

    The economic argument that taking action now rather than later will be cheaper has also been widely accepted since the Stern report in 2006. The election of President Obama has shifted policy in the US from seeking to block an agreement to seeking to find one.

    So the chances of success should be good, but the politics are tough. The most vocal arguments are about equity: the rich world caused the problem so why should the poor world pay to put it right?

    Can the rich world do enough through its own actions and through its financial and technological support for the poor to persuade the poor to join in a global agreement? The present economic climate doesn’t help, giving sceptics from the rich world arguments for not acting—or at least not acting now. And the sensitive issue of population stabilisation continues to slip off the agenda but is crucial to achieving real reductions in global carbon dioxide emissions.

    These arguments need to be tackled head on. Climate change is global, and emissions know no frontiers. The necessary measures should be seen not as a cost but as an opportunity.

    Coal-fired power stations and internal combustion engines pollute the atmosphere and worsen health, and deforestation destroys biodiversity, whereas saving energy helps hard-pressed household budgets, and drought-resistant crops help poor farmers. So even without climate change, the case for clean power, electric cars, saving forests, energy efficiency, and new agriculture technology is strong. Climate change makes it unanswerable.

    The threat to health is especially evident in poorest countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, as the recent Lancet and University College London report shows. These countries are struggling to meet the Millennium Development Goals.

    Their poverty and lack of resources, infrastructure, and often governance, greatly increase their vulnerability to the effects of climate change. Warmer climate can lead to drought, pressure on resources (particularly water), migration, and conflict. The conflict in Darfur is as much about pressure on resources as the desert encroaches as about the internal politics of Sudan.

    And the implications for the health of local populations are acute: on the spread and changing patterns of disease, notably water-borne diseases from inadequate and unclean supplies; on maternal and child mortality as basic health services collapse; and on malnutrition where food is scarce. And population stabilisation will not be achieved if, for want of resources, girls are not educated and contraceptives are unavailable.

    Climate change is causing other kinds of extreme weather events too: storms, floods, and rising sea levels affecting coastal populations and islands. Every such event has adverse consequences for health. The poorer the country and its infrastructure, the worse are the consequences and the poorer the chances of meeting the Millennium Development Goals.

    Crucially for winning hearts and minds in richer countries, what’s good for the climate is good for health. The measures needed to combat climate change coincide with those needed to ensure a healthier population and reduce the burden on health services. A low-carbon economy will mean less pollution. A low-carbon diet (especially eating less meat) and more exercise will mean less cancer, obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Opportunity, surely, not cost.

    This is an opportunity too to advance health equity, which is increasingly seen as necessary for a healthy and happy society. If we take climate change seriously, it will require major changes to the way we live, reducing the gap between carbon rich and carbon poor within and between countries.

    The Commission on Social Determinants of Health said that action to promote health must go well beyond health care. It must focus on the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age, and in the structural drivers of those conditions—inequities in power, money, and resources. These insights give further confirmation that what is good for the climate is good for health.

    A successful outcome at Copenhagen is vital for our future as a species and for our civilisation. It will require recognition by the rich countries of their obligations to the poor; and recognition by the poor countries that climate change is a global problem that requires a global solution in which we all have to play a part.

    It will require a new mindset: that the measures needed to mitigate the risks of climate change and adapt to its already inevitable effects provide an opportunity to achieve goals that are desirable in their own right – the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals in the poor countries and a healthier more equal society in the rich world and globally. Failure to agree radical reductions in emissions spells a global health catastrophe, which is why health professionals must put their case forcefully now and after Copenhagen.

    • Michael Jay, chair, Merlin; Professor Sir Michael Marmot, director, International Institute for Society and Health

  • World Bank warns 2C rise will cripple development efforts

     

    In a move that is likely to bolster the negotiating position of emerging economies, such as China and India, World Bank president Robert Zoellick echoed their view that the onus was on rich nations to deliver an “equitable deal” at the upcoming UN climate change conference in Copenhagen that acknowledges their historic responsibility for global warming.

    “Developing countries are disproportionately affected by climate change – a crisis that is not of their making and for which they are the least prepared,” he said.

    The report recommends that by 2030 rich nations will need to invest $400bn a year to help developing nations cut emissions through the adoption of new low carbon technologies and $75bn a year to help them adapt to the impact of climate change, in addition to the hundreds of billions of dollars of R&D investment that will be required to develop cost-effective clean technologies.

    The scale of the sums involved are an order of magnitude higher than those currently being considered by many rich nations. For example, to date the only offer of climate change investment made as part of the Copenhagen process is UK prime minister Gordon Brown’s proposal that rich nations invest $100 billion a year to help poorer nations cut emissions.

    Justin Lin, World Bank chief economist, warned that without increased investment from developed economies poorer nations would find themselves unable to cope with the impacts of climate change. “Developing countries, which have historically contributed little to global warming, are now, ironically, faced with 75 to 80 per cent of the potential damage from it,” he said. “They need help to cope with climate change, as they are preoccupied with existing challenges such as reducing poverty and hunger and providing access to energy and water.”

    The report also claims that such investments will make economic sense for industrialised economies, arguing that the cost of addressing climate change will only rise as “more and more investments are made in the wrong kinds of infrastructure and energy”.

    The report is likely to be welcomed by green groups, many of whom have long complained that the World Bank has been guilty of undermining investment in low carbon technologies in the developing world by favouring carbon intensive projects.

    For example, the bank has faced consistent criticism for funding coal projects and it recently suspended investment in the palm oil sector after an investigation found that it had provided financing to a company allegedly linked to rainforest deforestation.

    The Bank said that it has improved its record of investment in clean technologies, increasing financing for renewable energy and energy efficiency projects in developing countries by 24 per cent in the fiscal year 2009 to over $3.3bn, a record high. It added that renewable energy and energy-efficiency projects last year made up over 40 per cent of the $8.2bn of energy financing provided by the bank, although critics will point out that 60 per cent of fina ncing is still funnelled into conventional energy projects.

  • Ocean surfaces have warmest summer on record, US report finds

     

    “During the season, warmer-than-average temperatures engulfed much of the planet’s surface,” the centre said. Australia and New Zealand had their warmest August since records began.

    However, central Canada and the United States were the exceptions, with unusually cool temperatures. “In some areas, such as the western United States, temperatures were much cooler than average,” the report said.

    The unusually warm summer temperatures for much of the world’s oceans were due to El Niño, the periodic warming of the Pacific. If El Niño strengthens, global temperatures are likely to set new records, the report said. So far, 2009 has been the fifth warmest year on record.

    Some scientists have suggested that, the effects of El Niño, coupled with warming due to climate change could well make the coming decade the hottest in human history.

    Nasa predicted at the start of this year that 2009 and 2010 could see the setting of new global temperature records.

    The report also noted the continuing retreat in Arctic sea ice over the summer. Sea ice covered an average of 6.3m sq kilometres (2.42m sq miles) during August, according to the national snow and ice data centre. That was 18.4% the 1979-2000 average.

  • Investors call for action on global warming

     

    The summit drew together managers of the world’s leading investment funds, including those from HSBC, Henderson, Schroders, Société Générale and Scottish Widows, and pensions funds from California public employees to the BBC and Church of England. It was aimed at overcoming entrenched opposition within the US and elsewhere to climate change legislation, by showcasing the scale of investor support for climate change action and the potential for mobilisation of private capital.

    “For anybody who suggests that regulating carbon or acting on climate change is impractical, here is appropriate contradiction,” said Mindy Lubber, the president of Ceres, the green investor network that helped organise the conference. However, she warned: “Investors are ready to put money into green tech, but they are not going to act until the government acts and makes clear that the right incentives are in the right place.”

    The investors’ endorsement for action on climate change comes amid signs of a loss of momentum in the final stretch of negotiations towards a deal to tackle global warming in Copenhagen in December. The group warned that failure to act effectively would have disastrous consequences in human and economic terms.

    In contrast to inaction, Lord Nicholas Stern, author of the 2006 Stern report on the economics of climate change, said: “Building a low carbon economy creates opportunities for investment in new technologies that promise to transform our society in the same way as … electricity or railways did in the past.” He added: “Unmitigated climate change poses a threat to the global economy.”

    In their joint statement the investors supported the tougher targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions put forward for negotiation at Copenhagen, including cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by developed countries of 25-40% by 2020.The conference was held amid rising frustration that the US Congress and the international negotiations are faltering in the final days before Copenhagen. Stern, in his remarks, said it was time to move away from the “quarrelsome stupid politics” surrounding climate change.

  • Watching their lives slip away in Port Macquarie

     

    Council is considering 13 options. The outcome  residents fear most is a “reactive management response” where council would cut services such as sewerage and water to the beachside properties,  effectively making  the properties uninhabitable.

    There is no provision for financial compensation under this option _ and residents would be responsible for having their properties demolished.

    Mrs Secombe said if the council chose to evict them from their homes, it would strip them of their  future.
    “We would be  desperate. We’re just pensioners and we don’t have much,” Mrs Secombe said.

    Other options up for consideration include building sea walls and artificial reefs, or dredging Lake Cathie and pumping sand on to the eroding beach.

    Lake Cathie Coastal Resident’s Group spokesman Stephen Hunt said it was “bewildering” to think the council could even consider allowing  erosion to get so close that people would have to abandon their houses.

    “There are plenty of other options such as building a sea wall, dredging part of the lake. It would be devastating if they didn’t try that,” Mr Hunt said.

    Port Macquarie MP Peter Besseling said beach erosion was a problem right along the NSW coastline and needed to be tackled by all levels of government.

    “This is a time-lapse tsunami, it’s a natural disaster over time,” he said.

    Council development director Matt Rogers said no decision would be made until after submissions closed on October 7, but said forcing people to vacate their houses as erosion took over “is not council’s preferred option”.