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Article: UK Population Growth: Draft PQs
what are the costs of more people being added to the planet? Place to start learning about those costs.what are the costs of more people being added to the planet? Place to start learning... more-
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U.N. Panel Finds Climate Change Behind Some Extreme Weather Events
From The New York Times: Environment
By JUSTIN GILLIS
Published: November 18, 2011
It is likely that greenhouse gas emissions related to human activity have already led to more record-high temperatures and fewer record lows, as well as to greater coastal flooding and possibly to more extremes of precipitation, the report said.
Whether inland flooding is getting worse because of greenhouse gases is murkier, the report said. Nor, it found, can any firm conclusion be drawn at this point about a human influence on hurricanes, typhoons, hail storms or tornadoes.
The findings were released at a conference in Kampala, Uganda, by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a high-profile United Nations body assigned to review and report periodically on developments in climate research. They come at a time of unusual weather disasters around the globe, from catastrophic flooding in Asia and Australia to blizzards, floods, heat waves, droughts, wildfires and windstorms in the United States that have cost billions of dollars.
“A hotter, moister atmosphere is an atmosphere primed to trigger disasters,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a Princeton University climate scientist and a principal author of the new report. “As the world gets hotter, the risk gets higher.”
The I.P.C.C. won the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore in 2007 for its efforts on climate change, but later became a focus of controversy related to minor factual errors in a large report that it had issued that year. It has tightened its procedures in the hope of preventing future errors.
The new report on extreme weather, one of a string of reports that the panel is issuing on relatively narrow issues, did not break much ground scientifically, essentially refining findings that have been emerging in climate science papers in recent years.
Indeed, the delegates meeting in Kampala adopted scientifically cautious positions in some areas. For instance, some researchers have presented evidence suggesting that hurricanes are growing more intense because of climate change, but the report sided with a group of experts who say that such a claim is premature.
Nonetheless, the report predicted that certain types of weather extremes will grow more numerous and more intense as human-induced global warming worsens in coming decades.
“It is virtually certain that increases in the frequency and magnitude of warm daily temperature extremes and decreases in cold extremes will occur in the 21st century on the global scale,” the report said. “It is likely that the frequency of heavy precipitation or the proportion of total rainfall from heavy falls will increase in the 21st century over many areas of the globe.”
By the end of the century, if greenhouse emissions continue unabated, the type of heat wave that now occurs once every 20 years will be occurring every couple of years across large areas of the planet, the report predicted.
Even as such extremes are projected to increase, human vulnerability to them is growing as well, the report said. Rising populations and flawed decisions about land use, like permitting unchecked coastal development, are putting more and more people in harm’s way, the report said.
“Rapid urbanization and the growth of megacities, especially in the developing countries, have led to the emergence of highly vulnerable urban communities, particularly through informal settlements” — meaning slums — “and inadequate land management,” the report said.
Increases in population density and in the value of property at risk, rather than changes in the climate, are the likeliest explanation for rising disaster losses in many countries, the report said. It called on governments to do a better job of protecting people and heading off catastrophes before they strike.
The report, approved in its final form on Friday morning, is a 29-page summary of a larger document with more scientific detail that is not expected to be ready until the spring. The group’s next all-encompassing review of climate science is due in 2013.
In two weeks, negotiators from many countries are to convene in Durban, South Africa, to try, as they have been doing for nearly 20 years, to come up with more effective ways of reining in the greenhouse gas emissions that scientists say are causing the climate to change.
Analysts are not optimistic about any major breakthrough at those talks. At the same time, some countries that had long held out are starting to adopt stronger domestic policies on climate change, with Australia being a notable example. It passed a carbon tax earlier this month.
Some groups that have long attacked mainstream climate science did so again Friday in response to the new report. David Whitehouse, an astrophysicist working for a London organization called the Global Warming Policy Foundation, declared that “the I.P.C.C. scientists are speculating far beyond any reasonable scientific justification.”
But advocates of climate action, particularly American groups stymied in their efforts to win aggressive measures in Washington, welcomed the new report.
“I think it really provides an opportunity to shift the conversation away from just changes in global averages to the kinds of extreme weather that people are seeing in their back yards,” said Juanita Constible, who follows scientific issues for the Climate Reality Project, founded by Mr. Gore.
http://www.whataretheywaitingfor.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Global-Climate-Change.jpgFrom The New York Times: Environment By JUSTIN GILLIS Published: November 18, 2011... more-
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Making Sense of 7 Billion People
On the last day of October 2011, the global population of an upstart branch of the primate order will reach 7 billion.
What does it mean?
In itself, not much: Seven billion is just a one-digit flicker from 6,999,999,999. But the number carries a deep existential weight, symbolizing themes central to humanity’s relationship with the rest of life on Earth.
For context, let’s consider a few other numbers. The first: 10,000. That’s approximately how many Homo sapiens existed 200,000 years ago, the date at which scientists mark the divergence of our species from the rest of Homo genus, of which we are the sole survivors.
From those humble origins, humans — thanks to our smarts, long-distance running skills, verbal ability and skill with plants — proliferated at an almost inconceivable rate.
Some may note that, in a big-picture biological sense, humanity has rivals: In total biomass, ants weigh as much as we do, oceanic krill weigh more than both of us combined, and bacteria dwarf us all. Those are interesting factoids, but they belie a larger point.
Ants and krill and bacteria occupy an entirely different ecological level. A more appropriate comparison can be made between humans and other apex predators, which is precisely the ecological role humans evolved to play, and which — beneath our civilized veneer — we still are.
According to a back-of-the-envelope calculation, there are about 1.7 million other top-level, land-dwelling, mammalian predators on Earth. Put another way: For every non-human mammal sharing our niche, there are more than 4,000 of us.
In short, humans are Earth’s great omnivore, and our omnivorous nature can only be understood at global scales. Scientists estimate that 83 percent of the terrestrial biosphere is under direct human influence. Crops cover some 12 percent of Earth’s land surface, and account for more than one-third of terrestrial biomass. One-third of all available fresh water is diverted to human use.
Altogether, roughly 20 percent of Earth’s net terrestrial primary production, the sheer volume of life produced on land on this planet every year, is harvested for human purposes — and, to return to the comparative factoids, it’s all for a species that accounts for .00018 percent of Earth’s non-marine biomass.
We are the .00018 percent, and we use 20 percent. The purpose of that number isn’t to induce guilt, or blame humanity. The point of that number is perspective. At this snapshot in life’s history, at — per the insights of James C. Rettie, who imagined life on Earth as a yearlong movie — a few minutes after 11:45 p.m. on December 31, we are big. Very big.
However, it must be noted that, as we’ve become big, much of life had to get out of the way. When modern Homo sapiens started scrambling out of East Africa, the average extinction rate of other mammals was, in scientific terms, one per million species years. It’s 100 times that now, a number that threatens to make non-human life on Earth collapse.
In regard to that number, environmentalists usually say that humanity’s fate depends on the life around us. That’s debatable. Humans are adaptable and perfectly capable of living in squalor, without clean air or clean water or birds in the trees. If not, there wouldn’t be 7 billion of us. Conservation is a moral question, and probably not a utilitarian imperative.
But the fact remains that, for all of humanity to experience a material standard of living now enjoyed by a tiny fraction, we’d need four more Earths. It’s just not possible. And that, in the end, is the significance of 7 billion. It’s a challenge.
In just a few minutes of evolutionary time, humanity has become a force to be measured in terms of the entirety of life itself. How do we, want to live? For the answer, check back at 8 billion.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/10/7-billion-people/On the last day of October 2011, the global population of an upstart branch of the... more-
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A Very Scary Halloween 2011
{{{I wanted to blog something REALLY scary and frightening this year for Halloween. I thought of the usual icons of Halloween: Frankenstein, Ghosts, or perhaps Freddie Cruger of ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ fame but when I saw the article 'Various '7 billionth' babies celebrated worldwide' I thought... 'THERE AIN'T NUTTIN SCARIER THAN THAT"!
Please read the article, it's a real eye-opener and should awake every one of us to the realization that something has to be done about this fiasco and FAST! The pain and anguish that awaits our kind will be of epic proportions, in the not so distant future. }}}
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It's Halloween and a little baby girl is born (a symbol of the Earth's human population reaching 7B). WOW, THAT'S SCARY; 7 billion homo-sapiens running around, drinking and devouring Earth's limited resources. Should say volumes to the anti-choice people who are now trying to pass ignorant and delusional laws that say personhood begins at conception (fertilization of the egg).
I wonder, will this law make them all start to label their belief systems’, God, a murderer for spontaneous abortion (miscarriage)?
The mother of this 7 billionth Earthling says it best...
"The number of homeless children I see on the streets keeps multiplying," Camacho said. "When I see them, I'm bothered because I eat and maybe they don't."
I wish the so called 'Pro Lifers" could conjure up such compassion and empathy for all those future babies who will be born into a world that cannot feed and nourish their humongous number' thus, condemning them a life of misery and suffering. Please read this informative but startling article.
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Various '7 billionth' babies celebrated worldwide
MANILA, Philippines (AP) — She came into the world at two minutes before midnight, a tiny, wrinkled girl born into a struggling Manila family. On Monday, she became a symbol of the world's population reaching 7 billion people and all the worries that entails for the planet's future.
Danica May Camacho, born in a crowded public hospital, was welcomed with a chocolate cake marked "7B Philippines" and a gift certificate for free shoes. There were bursts of photographers' flashes, and speeches by local officials.
The celebrations, though, reflected symbolism more than demography.
Amid the millions of births and deaths around the world each day, it is impossible to pinpoint the arrival of the globe's 7 billionth occupant. But the U.N. chose Monday to mark the day with a string of festivities worldwide, and a series of symbolic 7-billionth babies being born.
Danica was the first, arriving at Manila's Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital at two minutes before midnight Sunday — but doctors say that was close enough to count for a Monday birthday.
"She looks so lovely," the mother, Camille Galura, whispered as she cradled the 2.5-kilo (5.5-pound) baby, who was born about a month premature.
The baby was the second for Galura and her partner, Florante Camacho, a driver who supports the family on a tiny salary driving a 'jeepney,' ubiquitous four-wheel drive vehicles used by many poor and working-class Filipinos.
Dr. Eric Tayag of the Philippines' Department of Health said later that the birth came with a warning.
"Seven billion is a number we should think about deeply," he said.
http://news.yahoo.com/various-7-billionth-babies-celebrated-worldwide-064439018.html{{{I wanted to blog something REALLY scary and frightening this year for Halloween. I... more-
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NOAA: Human forcings on climate already a factor in Mediterranean droughts
Wintertime droughts are increasingly common in the Mediterranean region, and human-caused climate change is partly responsible, according to a new analysis by NOAA scientists and colleagues at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES). In the last 20 years, 10 of the driest 12 winters have taken place in the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea.
“The magnitude and frequency of the drying that has occurred is too great to be explained by natural variability alone,” said Martin Hoerling, Ph.D. of NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo., lead author of a paper published online in the Journal of Climate this month. “This is not encouraging news for a region that already experiences water stress, because it implies natural variability alone is unlikely to return the region’s climate to normal.”
The above is from a news release from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “NOAA study: Human-caused climate change a major factor in more frequent Mediterranean droughts.”
It’s a bombshell for three reasons. First, this NOAA team has not always found a human cause for extreme weather events, as Climate Progress discussed here. Second, the study found that global warming is already driving drought in a key region of the world: Climate change is harming a great many people now. Third, the analysis provides important confirmation of climate predictions that human-caused emissions would lead to drying: “The team also found agreement between the observed increase in winter droughts and in the projections of climate models that include known increases in greenhouse gases.”
This comes on the heel of the USGS study, that, despite its flaws still found, “The decrease of floods in the southwestern region is consistent with other research findings that this region has been getting drier and experienced less precipitation as a likely result of climate change.”
And these studies amplify the piece I had in the journal Nature this week that argued drying and Dust-Bowlification driven by climate change — and the impact on food insecurity — are probably the gravest threats the human race faces in the coming decades.
The fact that the NOAA analysis confirmed the climate models predictions of drying is especially worrisome because the climate models project a very dry future for large parts of the planet’s currently habited and arable land in the coming decades:
More at the linkWintertime droughts are increasingly common in the Mediterranean region, and... more-
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Does Pat Buchanan have 'compromising photos' of MSNBC President Phil Griffin?
Now comes the release of Pat Buchanan's newest book of racial blather. It is called "Suicide of a Superpower." See, America is "killing itself" because the brown people are overrunning our population and Christianity is being treated as "just another religion.
http://www.billschmalfeldt.com/2011/10/does-pat-buchanan-have-compromising-photos-of-msnbc-president-phil-griffin/Now comes the release of Pat Buchanan's newest book of racial blather. It is... more-
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Climate-driven migration challenge underestimated
The challenges of human migration due to climate change have been underestimated as millions of people will either move into or be trapped in areas of risk by 2060, rather than migrating away, a British government report showed on Thursday.
The report, by the government-backed Foresight Program, examined the likely movement of people both within and between countries to 2060. It found the greatest risks will be borne by people who are unable or unwilling to relocate.
Those risks may also be made worse by policies which seek to prevent migration.
"We have assumed mass migration away from affected areas, but millions of people will also migrate into vulnerable areas and there will also be those who cannot migrate out," John Beddington, chief scientific adviser to the British government, told reporters.
"They pose different challenges to the international community," he added.
The United Nations estimates there were 210 million international migrants in 2010. A further 740 million were internal migrants in 2009.
An average 25 million people a year have been displaced due to weather-related events since 2008, which will likely rise as such events become more extreme and frequent, Beddington said.
The report estimates there will be between 154 and 179 million people living in rural coastal floodplains by 2060 who will be unable to move away due to poverty.
These trapped communities will need to be made more resilient to environmental events.
Up to 192 million people will also move into urban coastal floodplains in Africa and Asia by 2060 in search of work and a better economic situation.
This kind of migration could be beneficial by opening up new sources of income which help people become stronger and more resilient, enabling households to stay in a place for longer, the report said.
Migration should be considered when funds are being allocated at U.N. climate talks in November in Durban, South Africa, the report said.
The cost of doing nothing will be higher than the cost of measures to tackle migration, especially if they reduce the likelihood of displacement, it added.
"I would hope to see initiatives on migration, forestry and agriculture to follow the Durban meeting," said Beddington, adding that he does not expect a universally binding emissions reduction agreement to emerge this year.
More at the linkThe challenges of human migration due to climate change have been underestimated as... more-
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Article: A 20-rule manifesto for New No-Growth Economics
I like number 18. Here's it is: 18. The rise of a powerful, new democratic United Nations
After the megacrash, international cooperation will be more essential than ever.
You might read all 20 of them...I like number 18. Here's it is: 18. The rise of a powerful, new democratic... more-
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Why the Earth may be running out of clean water
Earlier this month, officials in the South Pacific island nation of Tuvalu had to confront a pretty dire problem: they were running out of water. Due to a severe and lasting drought, water reserves in this country of 11,000 people had dwindled to just a few days' worth. Climate change plays a role here: as sea levels rose, Tuvalu's groundwater became increasingly saline and undrinkable, leaving the island dependent on rainwater. But now a La Niña–influenced drought has severely curtailed rainfall, leaving Tuvalu dry as a bone. "This situation is bad," Pusinelli Laafai, Tuvalu's permanent secretary of home affairs, told the Associated Press earlier this month. "It's really bad."
So far Tuvalu has been bailed out by its neighbors Australia and New Zealand, which have donated rehydration packets and desalination equipment. But the archipelago's water woes are just beginning — and it's far from the only part of the world facing a big dry. Other island nations like the Maldives and Kiribati will see their groundwater spoil as sea levels rise. Texas, along with much of the American Southwest, is in the grip of a truly record-breaking drought — even after days of storms in the past month, Houston's total 2011 rainfall is still short of its yearly average by a whopping 2 ft., or 60 cm. Australia has experienced severely dry weather for so long, it's not even clear whether the country is in a state of drought, or more worryingly, a new and permanent dry climate that could forever alter life Down Under. "Climate-change impacts on water resources continue to appear in the form of growing influence on the severity and intensity of extreme events," says Peter Gleick, one of the foremost water experts in the U.S. and head of the Pacific Institute, an NGO based in Oakland, Calif., that focuses on global water issues. "Australia's recent extraordinary extreme drought should be an eye-opener for the rest of us."
(See photos of the world's water crisis.)
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2097159,00.html#ixzz1bAUCHxtB
More at the link.Earlier this month, officials in the South Pacific island nation of Tuvalu had to... more-
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How can we feed the world without destroying the planet?
What's one of the most damaging things that humans do to the earth? Agriculture. NPR reports on new research that suggests we need to be thinking about some big changes if we're going to feed a growing world population without destroying the planet.
NPR reports:
Consider: Cropland and pasture now cover 40 percent of our planet's land surface; farming consumes nearly three-quarters of all the water that humans use for any purpose; farming accounts for a third of all the emissions of greenhouse gases that humans release into the environment. (Those greenhouse emission come from clearing forests or grassland for crops, the emissions of methane from rice paddies, and the conversion of nitrogen fertilizer into nitrous oxide — a powerful greenhouse gas.)
That's bad enough, but Jonathan Foley from the University of Minnesota, who led this new analysis, says it's likely to get worse. Demand for food is expected to double over the next forty years.
How can we change in order to feed the world in a less destructive way? What will it mean for the way the world eats?What's one of the most damaging things that humans do to the earth? Agriculture.... more-
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Article: Sustainable Shrinkage: Envisioning a Smaller, Stronger Economy
In 1987 when the United Nations' Brundtland Report, Our Common Future, appeared to worldwide fanfare, its slogan of "sustainable development" reassured environmentalists, who focused on the term "sustainable," while pleasing business interests, who understood "development" to mean continued material growth. It seemed we could have it all. But many thoughtful observers then and since have pointed out that "sustainable development" is an oxymoron. On a finite planet, we can't have both sustainability and continued material growth. More than two decades after the Brundtland Report, it's past time to abandon this linguistic sleight of hand and rally around a new, shocking but this time realistic slogan: sustainable shrinkage! Within this new perspective, we can get on with saving species, restoring wastelands, improving efficiency, putting our life-support systems on sustainable bases-in short, finding solutions.In 1987 when the United Nations' Brundtland Report, Our Common Future, appeared... more-
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World's energy use to double by 2035-driven by fossil fuels in China and India
Global energy consumption will increase by 53 percent over the next 25 years to a mind-boggling 225,700 terawatt-hours (770 quadrillion BTUs ) as water- and carbon-intensive fossil fuels continue to dominate the world’s economies, despite the global recession and the strong growth in the renewable sector, according to a new annual report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
About half of the projected increase in energy use will occur in China and India, the world’s first- and third-largest energy consumers, respectively. The two developing economies will account for more than 30 percent of the global energy use during the next two decades.
“China alone — which only recently became the world’s top energy consumer — is projected to use 68 percent more energy than the United States by 2035,” said Howard Gruenspecht, the administrator for the EIA, in a press release.
In general, however, the overall projections made in the EIA report only reflect laws and policies as they stood at the beginning of 2011. In other words, the report does not incorporate prospective legislation — in China, for example — that, together with oil-price volatility and the pace of global economic recovery, could significantly affect energy markets.
Coal Production and Consumption
China relies on coal for about 70 percent of its energy generation, consuming 3.15 billion metric tons (3.5 billion tons) of coal last year. Meanwhile, India has been steadily increasing domestic coal production, its major source of energy, reaching over 500 million metric tons (551 million tons) in 2010.
Though future generation from renewables, natural gas, and nuclear power will largely displace coal-fired production, coal will remain the largest source of world electricity through 2035, particularly in developing nations, according to the EIA projections. China alone will account for 76 percent of the projected increase in world coal use.
more at the link
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WE ARE GOING IN THE WRONG DIRECTION.Global energy consumption will increase by 53 percent over the next 25 years to a... more-
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Article: Water crisis, population surge prompt rethink on food: UN
7 billion and counting up to 9 billion by 2050 and we just keep digging ourselves deeper and deeper7 billion and counting up to 9 billion by 2050 and we just keep digging ourselves... more-
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The Colorado River: Running Near Empty
Photographer Peter McBride traveled along the Colorado River from its source high in the Rocky Mountains to its historic mouth at the Sea of Cortez. In this Yale Environment 360 video, he follows the natural course of the Colorado by raft, on foot, and overhead in a small plane, telling the story of a river whose water is siphoned off at every turn, leaving it high and dry 80 miles from the sea.
In the video, McBride, a Colorado native, documents how increasing water demands have transformed the river that is the lifeblood for an arid Southwest.Photographer Peter McBride traveled along the Colorado River from its source high in... more-
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Water changes everything
When I started this blog several years ago these were the main areas of concern surrounding lack of access and potability of water in the world. And as with the climate crisis there have been many people out here talking about this and trying to educate people in doing what is necessary to provide this human right to all and warning of the consequences of not doing so. Unfortunately, though we have come some part of the way thanks to education, activism and the work of NGOs like Charity Water and others whose links I will also post here there is a long way to go.
As we are now seeing across the globe privitization is still trying to make more of a headway (even though we have seen initiatives in Germany, Italy and in the US in stopping this insidious move to control our global water supply) and moving to "commoditize" water in a market system sure to deprive the most poor of this basic human right even though it was declared so at the UN.
War is also playing a part. As a result of the tumultuous battles taking place in Libya the Great Manmade River Project started by Gaddafi (and this is not to be a political post so I will refrain from discussing opinions of him) which regardless of politics was and is an engineering marvel (I will post video on that here too) has been bombed and essentially shut down thereby cutting off water to more than half of Tripoli and other regions. Water is then still being used as a weapon of war which I find insidious regardless of who does it.
We are seeing as well increasing pollution levels in rivers, continued toxification of our oceans, acidification of our oceans, plastic garbage patches in our ocean's gyres that stretch for miles and on top of all of this, effects of a changing climate brought on by human activity that now threaten water supplies for billions of people worldwide and the systems that sustain our marinelife.
What are we to make of all of this? Are we finally reaching the point where more people will discover just how crucial water is to all of the systems that sustain us? If not, by the time critical mass is reached will it be beyond saving? For the next couple of weeks I will be writing and reporting on ways that we are affecting water and also ways we can save it. In the world we live in now water access has never been more of an urgent crisis.
That is why supporting organizations like Chartity Water are essential in working to provide equality, access and potability of water to the billions who now go without and that also includes adequate sanitation. It is unfathomable to believe that in the 21st century with all of the technological advances we have achieved that we still cannot provide basic sanitation and potable water for the people who live on this planet, even now as we explore other worlds. I say, let's take better care of the one we have now.
Please watch this video and look at the links to other organizations I will post here and reflect on what you can do to address this crisis locally and globally. Water is the one tie that binds us all. We cannot afford to lose it.
More at the link.When I started this blog several years ago these were the main areas of concern... more-
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Article: Global food crisis: China land deal causes unease in Argentina
China has run out of land to feed its people-
- frankpatton
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Article: Feeding A Hotter, More Crowded Planet
NPR interview-
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SUMATRAN TIGER - Vanishing Species...
There are only an estimated 400 Sumatran Tigers left in the wild, loss of habitat is a major factor in the decline of this species. Rainforest is being actively cleared by pulpwood plantations, putting added pressure onto endangered species in Indonesia.There are only an estimated 400 Sumatran Tigers left in the wild, loss of habitat is a... more-
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Climate change: "last straw" pushes millions from their homes
With political will to dramatically cut the world's greenhouse gas emissions failing to materialise, a multi-pronged approach is needed to protect the millions of people who are being displaced as a result of environmental factors driven largely by climate change, experts say.
"Climate change is looming as a potentially very serious and underappreciated complicating factor when it comes to international displacement," said Erika Feller, the assistant high commissioner for protection in the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
More is needed from the international community to address this challenge "in a coordinated and pragmatic manner", she told IPS.
Of paramount importance is that national authorities play a central role in developing appropriate responses to both the internal and external dimensions of climate-related displacement, while affected persons and communities must be made fully aware of their rights and given opportunities to participate in decision-making, Feller said.
"Decisions about where, when and how to relocate communities, for example, must be made in consultation with the affected populations and be sensitive to cultural and ethnic identities and boundaries to avoid possible tensions and conflicts," she added.
Last to Pollute, First to Suffer the Consequences
That the poor are always hardest-hit by natural disasters is a fact recently underlined by the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) Report 2010, which says that these nations "will be disproportionally affected by changing climatic conditions".
This despite the fact that LDCs account for less than one percent of the world's total greenhouse gas emissions, responsible for heating up the atmosphere and altering rainfall and weather patterns.
The frequency and intensity of extreme weather events in these regions are five times higher now (519 events in 2000-2010) than during the 1970s (116). In the last decade, about 40 percent of all casualties related to natural disasters were found in the poorest countries of the world, the report says.
Climate change affects LDCs in different ways. While Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are facing droughts and floods, some Asian LDCs, together with Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in the Pacific, are at risk particularly from rising sea levels and storms.
The 2009 "Human Impact Report - Climate Change" by the Geneva-based Global Humanitarian Forum estimated that 2.8 billion people are living in areas prone to one or more of the physical manifestations of climate change.
"The global nature of climate change calls for the widest possible cooperation by all countries and their participation in an effective and appropriate international response, in accordance with their common but different responsibilities and respective capabilities and their social and economic conditions," declared the Istanbul Programme of Action agreed to at the Fourth United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDC-IV) in Turkey in May and which was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly.
The list of necessary actions outlined in the programme, especially by so-called development partners, hinge on an urgent demand for promised financial and technical support – which critics say the world's richest countries, and those most culpable for climate change, have been dragging their feet on.
Staying close to home
The overwhelming majority of people who are displaced by environmental factors become internally displaced persons (IDPs) within their own countries. Just a fraction will likely cross international borders, said Michele Klein-Solomon, director of the Migration Policy, Research and Communications Department at the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).
"[The latter group tends to move] from countries in the South, in the developing world, to other countries in the 'less emitting world', and it is also not likely to be the most vulnerable who move," she explained.
More frequent and severe floods, storms, landslides or land degradation, droughts and water shortages – so called slow-onset natural and human-made disasters – can all be triggers for migration.
Those most in need of protection tend to lack sufficient resources to adapt to the new living conditions, and that can include an inability to move away or migrate to other countries.
Speaking at a conference at Columbia Law School in May on migration and climate change, Klein-Solomon stressed that it was important to grasp these facts to counter "the overwhelming fears of the developed world being awash with people who are coming into their countries, taking jobs and burdening social security mechanisms".
Even under worst case scenarios, in which some 250 million people could be displaced due to climate change over the next 25 to 30 years, it still would be "a tiny portion of the world's population", she said.
"We are really not talking about enormous numbers relative to global populations and we are not talking about hordes of people flooding into the Western, industrialised, developed countries. We do not need further repressive legislation and xenophobic debates as a result of this discussion," she added.
Few legal protections
Rapid-onset disasters attract far more attention from the media, policymakers and researchers than gradual environmental changes – such as the human consequences of rising sea levels, soil salination, deforestation and desertification.
Precise estimates on climate-induced migration are hard to come by. However, recent events such as last year's nationwide flooding in Pakistan, severe mudslides following heavy rainfall in Brazil and Colombia this spring, and the ongoing humanitarian disaster in drought-hit Somalia show that millions of people are already being driven from their homes and property due to extreme weather patterns.
International protection strategies are often marked by a humanitarian focus on "the immediate need of the person without necessarily looking at the causes of the phenomenon nor to a response in a longer term," said Paola Pace, acting head of the International Migration Law Unit at IOM's International Cooperation and Partnerships Department.
When emergencies occur, immediate funding is provided which lasts about three to six months, but for the subsequent "recuperation phase" it is very difficult to find donor support. This wastes the knowledge acquired in the initial months and squanders an opportunity to "really tackle the causes that brought about that emergency", Pace stressed in an interview with IPS.
The lack of a long-term strategy is a major problem for those seeking to protect and support affected populations. A better approach would go beyond basic needs – food, water, shelter – to address trauma and stress-induced illnesses, and provide opportunities for sustainable development in a new environment, she said.
The climate-displaced also face an uncertain legal situation. Neither international humanitarian law nor international refugee law has a legal definition for this group, making it difficult to hold governments responsible for their wellbeing.
Often, there are multiple, complex, interconnected factors at work, from extreme weather events to land degradation or sea-level rise, and identifying the exact culprit is impossible.
"[I]t is a bit like the straw that broke the camel's back," said Jane McAdam, an expert on refugees and international migration law at the University of New South Wales.
"Climate change is never the only reason why people move, there are always other factors like underlying socioeconomic conditions, for example," she told IPS.
Finding appropriate legal and policy responses requires a combination of strategies, "rather than an either/or approach", she said.
More at the linkWith political will to dramatically cut the world's greenhouse gas emissions... more-
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Power hungry: the surprising link between energy and water
Power and water are more interconnected than you might think, and that has serious consequences for a changing world, especially the American West.
Energy and water are as intertwined as the hydrogen and oxygen atoms in a bottle of Evian. California likes to think of itself as being ahead of the curve. So when the state set out to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, regulators did all the right things - stringent tailpipe standards for cars, tighter codes for buildings, higher renewable energy standards for utilities. Then they took one of the most aggressive energy-saving steps of all.
They started a campaign to save water.
The link between energy and water is not always apparent, but the two are as intertwined as the hydrogen and oxygen atoms in a bottle of Evian.
By now, everyone knows you save energy by turning out lights. And you conserve water by taking shorter showers. But it's just as true that saving water may be one of the most effective ways to save energy - and vice versa. "It's a 'buy one, get one free' deal," said Douglas Kenney, a professor at the University of Colorado Law School and the editor of an upcoming book that explores the nexus of water and energy.
In California today, the consumption of water accounts for 20 percent of the state's energy use. Much of that energy goes to heating water, but it takes power to gather, purify and distribute water, especially in places like southern California where water is piped hundreds of miles to supply Los Angeles' sprawling demands.
Nationally, energy production sucks more water from freshwater sources than any other sector except agriculture. It takes water to create the power we use to drive our cars, transport our groceries, and run our toaster ovens. Virtually every source of electricity in a typical American home or manufacturing plant - whether it comes from hydroelectricity, coal, natural gas, nuclear, biofuels, or even concentrated solar -- also requires water. Lots of water.
One reason for this problem is that electricity, as we've chosen to produce it, is pretty wet stuff. That's a growing problem, because in many places, finding water for energy isn't easy - and it's bound to get tougher as energy demands soar and climate change alters hydrological cycles in already arid regions. The energy sector is the fastest-growing water consumer in the United States, according to a January 2011 Congressional Research Service report [pdf].
Nationally, that's a challenge, but regionally it could be a calamity. As the Congressional Research report notes, "much of the growth in the energy sector's water demand is concentrated in regions with already intense competition over water."
Giant plug of concrete
The connection between energy and water - and the precariousness of that link in the western United States - is exemplified in a gigantic plug of concrete stopping the muddy Colorado River above Las Vegas, otherwise known as Hoover Dam. At the ceremony inaugurating the Depression-era public works project in 1935, then-Interior Secretary Harold Ickes noted proudly, "no better understanding of man cooperating with nature can be found anywhere."
Hoover Dam provided the two key ingredients - water and power - that freed the Southwest and southern California to go on a 75-year growth spurt. Lake Mead now supplies water to more than 22 million people, and it produces more than four billion kilowatts of electricity per year.
But Ickes likely never imagined how quickly man's cooperation with nature would disintegrate in the 21st century. In the American West, a burgeoning population created a double-whammy of surging power demands and dwindling freshwater supplies. The Colorado River, lifeblood of seven western states, is already as overdrawn as the federal treasury. Drought conditions during most of the 21st century have forced water managers to plan for a day when the region's vast system of dams and reservoirs no longer have enough water to store. Already, utilities have to scramble to respond on days when everybody in Phoenix, Las Vegas and Los Angeles wants to crank their air conditioners during the same heat wave.
Sustained drought and insatiable upstream water demand have drained Lake Mead to the point that experts are predicting it may soon be shallow enough to be in deep trouble. Despite near record snowfalls and runoff this year that raised its level from historic lows in January, Lake Mead is still 113 feet below "full pool" - and is filled to less than 50 percent of its capacity.
Three years ago researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography warned Lake Mead has a 50-50 chance of running dry by 2021 and that the reservoir's water level could dip low enough to reduce or stop electricity production as early as 2013. Although this year's run-off probably forestalled this dramatic assertion, utilities around the country have already been forced to reduce or stop electrical production because of water issues. According to a survey done in California's 2009 Water Plan Update [pdf], states from Virginia to Nevada and Texas to North Dakota have all curtailed energy development projects because of water quality or quantity concerns.
Wet stuff
One reason for this problem is that electricity, as we've chosen to produce it, is pretty wet stuff. Plug an appliance into an outlet and you might as well open a faucet as well. Running an average refrigerator all day uses about as much water as a ten-minute shower (without a low-flow showerhead). According to the U.S. Geological Survey, electric power generation accounts for nearly half of the nation's water usage [pdf]; it takes on average 21 gallons of water to produce one kilowatt hour of electricity. In the arid West, those numbers add up. A report by Western Resource Advocates [pdf] notes that "thermoelectric power plants in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, and Utah consumed an estimated 292 million gallons of water a day in 2005 - approximately equal to the water consumed by Denver, Phoenix, and Albuquerque, combined."
Pretty much every step of energy production requires water, from mining to refining, processing to generation. Some of this water is "consumed" - evaporated as steam. Some of it is returned to watersheds in altered forms - like water heated during coal-fired electrical production and stored in cooling towers or ponds before being released - at higher temperatures - back into rivers. "Produced" water from coal-bed methane extraction releases underground water with high mineral content into watersheds. Deep drilling for seams of underground gas deposits rely on chemicals used in "fracking fluids," which contaminate water sources when they leak.
Other potential fossil fuel energy sources, like oil shale, require so much water during its production cycle that energy companies in Colorado have stealthily acquired rights to develop hundreds of thousands of acre feet of water, even before they've invented a viable technology to turn that rock into oil. An acre foot of water is 325,851 gallons, or enough to cover an acre of flat farmland with water a foot deep.
That's enough water to escalate the state's already intense water disputes into open warfare. "If oil shale energy does become commercially viable, it will be a huge new water drain," says Dan Luecke, a Colorado-based hydrologist and Western water consultant.
More at the linkPower and water are more interconnected than you might think, and that has serious... more-
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