(US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse is a Reuters columnist but his opinions are his own.)

By Senator Sheldon Whitehouse

June 19 (Reuters) – The effects of climate change, driven by carbon pollution, hit Americans harder each year. Extreme weather events like hurricanes, wildfires and droughts are growing ever more frequent and severe.

Beyond our borders, these changes are hitting developing nations.

Since our nation’s founding, America has stood as an example for the world. Now, we owe it to ourselves and to other nations, who look to Washington, to lead the way on climate change by putting a price on carbon pollution and taking other steps to minimize the harm being done to developing nations – and our own.

In many of the world’s poorest regions, the sun scorches drought-stricken farmland and parches freshwater sources. Fierce storms bring ravaging floods. Warming, rapidly acidifying oceans and shifting seasons drive off economically valuable species and foster pests and disease.

This year, the worst flood in a decade killed at least 38 people in Mozambique and left 150,000 homeless. Warmer weather allows malaria-bearing mosquitoes to move into previously unaffected altitudes, infecting cities like Nairobi, which had purposely been built above the “malaria line.” Ten of the 15 largest cities in the developing world, including Shanghai, Mumbai and Cairo, are at risk of flooding from rising sea levels or coastal storm surges. Rising seas are swallowing low-lying land in countries such as Bangladesh and India.

Climate change endangers much of the world economy as well. Economists calculate that a 3.5?F rise in global temperature would reduce global gross domestic product by 1 percent. But loss will be 4 percent in Africa, and 5 percent in India. The United Nations estimates that environmental disasters could drive as many as 3 billion people into extreme poverty by the year 2050.

These regions face a crisis not of their making. Developed countries have churned out two-thirds of all the carbon dioxide pollution since the Industrial Revolution – one-quarter of that from the United States alone.

We have much to gain here at home from efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change: safer coastal communities, healthier farming and fishing industries, and cleaner air to breathe. But the American experiment has always been about more than that.

Indeed, as one of the largest emitters of carbon pollution, the United States has a responsibility to help emerging nations adapt to the stark reality of a changing climate, lest, as Daniel Webster warned, our own example “become an argument against the experiment.”

We are now taking important steps to help poorer nations cope with climate change. Indeed, federal agencies, from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Environmental Protection Agency, to the Agriculture and Defense Departments, support adaptation strategies in the developing world. We provide financing to support construction and hardening of physical infrastructure. We make available technology to improve weather forecasting and irrigation techniques. While these physical adaptation programs are crucial, the crisis of climate change also requires political and diplomatic adaptation.

This is the mission of the State Department’s Environment, Science and Technology and Health (ESTH) officers. These officers engage on both a bilateral and a regional basis to promote good environmental governance, enable sustainable trade practices, advance resource and wildlife conservation, and improve access to healthcare. Many work closely with our allies around the globe, helping make communities more resilient to the devastating effects of climate change.

This is still a small effort. As of 2011, 260 of the State Department’s more than 13,000 Foreign Service officers handled environment, science, technology and health issues in our embassies. Only 76 were full-time ESTH officers. Theirs is vital work. It is worth replicating on a larger scale.

The United States must also set an example by putting a price on carbon pollution. I’m working with Representative Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and others to finalize legislation that would do so. Right now, the big polluters pump billions of tons of carbon into our atmosphere, forcing the rest of us to pay the price through higher healthcare costs, higher rebuilding costs after carbon-driven extreme weather events, and more.

Our proposal would put those costs back on the polluters. It would generate billions of dollars in new revenue, which could produce substantial benefits for the U.S. economy. But, just as important, it would improve the global environment by encouraging reduced emissions. It would also send a message that we are ready to lead once more on one of the great issues of our time.

The effects of more than a century of Western pollution bear heavily on less-developed countries. The eyes of the world are on us. Without concerted action, we run the risk of allowing climate change to destabilize entire nations – and their confidence in America’s leadership.

(U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) is a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee and co-chairman of the Bicameral Task Force on Climate Change of the US Senate. He also serves on the Budget and Judiciary Committees. (Senator Sheldon Whitehouse)

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Today, NRDC is launching a new webtool that lets you take a ‘Snapshot’ of what climate change means in your area. You can read whether current conditions and trends in your area indicate a higher vulnerability to extreme weather events, such as heat waves, floods, and drought as well as health risks that climate change is fueling, right now.

Here’s how it works: you enter your ZIP Code to get a quick ‘Snapshot” of how your county stacks up in several of the categories from our climate vulnerability maps: Extreme heat, air pollution, flooding, drought, infectious illness like dengue fever, wildfires, sea level rise, and extreme weather. It’s a quick way to get a sense of how these threats can affect the environment and your health, right where you live.

You can also easily share your Snapshot on Facebook or Twitter with the webtool.

NRDC has been bringing together scientific information about the local effects of global climate change on communities nationwide since 2007. We’ve created web tools that let you zoom in and ask, ‘What does climate change mean in my backyard?’ Our online maps connect the dots between climate change and the ways it harms our health.  We’ve mapped extreme weather events that are being fueled by climate change, and we also highlight preparedness steps that protect our kids’ health and our own, saving lives and dollars along the way.

Climate change is one of the most serious public health threats facing our nation, but many people don’t yet realize how it could affect their local community and health. While climate change threatens all of us, children, the elderly, and communities living in poverty are among the most vulnerable. Storms like Hurricane Sandy and searing summers like 2012 – the hottest summer in America’s history – take a huge toll on health, and are themselves a ‘snapshot’ of what our future will look like more and more, with climate change. We need to be ready.

Why the urgency now?

• Extreme heat can be lethal. The annual death toll from extreme heat is already on the rise, according to a report released by the CDC at the beginning of June, with the number of heat-related deaths predicted to jump from the current annual rate of around 700 to between 3,000 and 5,000 by 2050.
• Increasing flood risks with climate change will hammer homeowners. A new report released by FEMA suggests that, by 2100, the number of flood-prone properties in the U.S. could double. An estimated 70% of that additional flood risk will be from climate change (the other 30% due to projected population growth in at-risk areas).
• Drought and wildfire risks are worsened by extreme heat. Much of Texas is in a state of drought emergency declared by Governor Rick Perry, and the costs of the 2012 drought have been estimated at $60-100 billion.
• It’s been estimated that American taxpayers in 2012 paid $139 billion in damages related to many types of events fueled by climate change: severe weather, flooding, wildfire and drought.
• The health-related costs of climate change add billions more – not to mention the costs in lives lost, illnesses, lost work and school days, and diminished quality of life on hot, smoggy days.

Hopefully, our new webtool will bring these statistics home for people.  We want people to be able to think about and talk about their own local climate-health vulnerabilities — because taking action to protect the places and the people we love from climate change is an urgent matter.

What kinds of actions could make a difference?

Limiting heat-trapping carbon pollution, which is the root cause of climate change, would make an enormous difference. The US Environmental Protection Agency State has proposed limits on carbon pollution from power plants, which would cut about 40% of US emissions. This is a critical step forward. You can ‘Take Action’ here to write the President a letter saying so.

At the same time as we work to prevent and reduce carbon pollution before it gets into the air by moving toward cleaner, less polluting fuels, we need to become better-prepared for climate change, too. State preparedness plans and policies have not kept pace with these health challenges. Only about one-third of US states have climate preparedness plans in place that include public health measures to cope with climate challenges.

We have to do better than this.

We need to prepare and plan for the future, not the past. And the future isn’t an abstraction: it’s where your kids and grandkids will live, and you, too, in a slightly older version. Your local climate-vulnerability Snapshot could be a different picture in the future, if we put the brakes on heat-trapping carbon pollution today and veer away from the worst effects of climate change.

June 19, 2013 — Climate records captured in Siberian caves suggest 1.5 degrees of warming is enough to trigger thawing of permafrost, according to a paper to be given at the Geological Society of London on 27 June.

An iceberg floats in Jacobshavn fjord in Greenland in 2006. Photo Reuters

The World Bank has warned that Bangladesh, under a 2°C warming, emerges as an impact hotspot with sea-level rise causing threats to food production, livelihoods, urban areas and infrastructure.
Shifting rain patterns in South Asia leaving some parts under water and others without enough water for power generation, irrigation, or drinking are the likely impacts of a possible global temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius  in the next few decades that threatens to trap millions of people in poverty, a World Bank report on climate change says.
Under 4°C warming, the west coast and southern India, as well as Bhutan and northern Bangladesh, are projected to shift to new, high-temperature climatic regimes, the report said.
The report, prepared for the World Bank by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Climate Analytics, reveals how rising global temperatures are increasingly threatening the health and livelihoods of the most vulnerable populations, crucially magnifying problems each region is struggling with today.
Unusual heat is projected for 60–80 percent of the Northern Hemisphere summer months in most parts of the region, the WB report said
Bangladesh emerges as an impact hotspot with increasing and compounding challenges occurring in the same timeframe from extreme river floods, more intense tropical cyclones, rising sea levels, extraordinarily high temperatures, and declining crop yields.
Increased river flooding combined with tropical cyclone surges poses a high risk of inundation in areas with the largest shares of poor populations.
A 27 cm sea-level rise, projected for the 2040s, in combination with storm surges from an average 10-year return period cyclone, such as Cyclone Sidr, could inundate an area more than 80-percent larger than the area inundated at present by a similar event, it adds.

TURN DOWN THE HEAT

Climate Extremes, Regional Impacts, and the Case for Resilience builds on a World Bank report released late last year, which concluded the world would warm by 4 degrees Celsius (4°C or 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels by the end of this century if we did not take concerted action now.
This new report looks at the likely impacts of present day, 2°C and 4°C warming on agricultural production, water resources, coastal ecosystems and cities across Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and South East Asia.
Deaths in India and Bangladesh currently account for 86 percent of global mortalities from cyclones even though only 15 percent of all tropical cyclones affect this region.
“This new report outlines an alarming scenario for the days and years ahead – what we could face in our lifetime,” said World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim.
“The scientists tell us that if the world warms by 2°C — warming which may be reached in 20 to 30  years –  that will cause widespread food shortages, unprecedented heat-waves, and more intense cyclones.
In the near-term, climate change, which is already unfolding, could batter the slums even more and greatly harm the lives and the hopes of individuals and families who have had little hand in raising the Earth’s temperature.”
“These changes forecast for the tropics illustrate the level of hardships that will be inflicted on all regions eventually, it we fail to keep warming under control,” Kim said.
“Urgent action is needed to not only reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but also to help countries prepare for a world of dramatic climate and weather extremes,” he added.