Impact of Climate Change:
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Over 800 colleges and universities, K-12 schools, civic organizations and religious groups are participating in Focus the Nation, potentially the largest simultaneous teach-in in history. (READ MORE) |
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Climate change would in effect reduce the world to bankruptcy by 2065, with world economic growth averaging 3% a year while insurance losses because of extreme weather increasing by 10% a year.
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[Dr. Andrew Dlugolecki,
climate change specialist with CGNU
at The Hague Conference 24/11/00] |
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| CIER Report on Costs of Climate Change |
| http://www.cier.umd.edu/climateadaptation |
| The Center or Integrative Environmental Research (CIER) has released its report on the cost of climate change in the US. Download the executive summary of the report, "The US Economic Impacts of Climate Change and the Costs of Inaction," (PDF document) Link above goes to the Full Report, Regional Summaries and other related information. |
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| Climate Science Impacts |
| http://theclimategroup.org/index.php/about_climate_change/impacts/ |
- Economic: In November 2000 Dr. Andrew Dlugolecki, director of general insurance development at CGNU, the UK’s largest insurance group, released a report estimating that the impact of climate change could bankrupt the global economy by 2065.
- Food and Water: Climate change will cause food and water shortages in certain areas. For example, rice production in China is predicted to fall one fifth by 2080. Two out of every three people in the world will be facing water shortages by 2025.
- Extreme Weather: The frequency of extreme weather events is predicted to increase and there is evidence of this occurring already. The 2005 hurricane season broke virtually every record including 27 named storms and the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic Basin.
- Health: Climate change will increase the incidence of deaths from extreme weather events and disease. A rise in temperature of 2-3°C could increase the number of people at risk of malaria by around 3-5%, i.e. several hundred million people.
- Sea Level Rise: Virtually every glacier in the world has been retreating over the past century. Both the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps are now loosing a combined 20 billion tons of ice to the oceans each year. Sea level is predicted to rise by up to 0.88m by 2100. Over 17 million people in Bangladesh live at an elevation of less than 1.5m above sea level. The Pacific island nation of Tuvalu has already drawn up evacuation plans with New Zealand amid concerns of inundation by the sea.
- Thermohaline Circulation Collapse: The THC (commonly known as the Gulf Stream) transports the equivalent heat output of a million power stations and warms the climate by up to 5°C in northwest Europe. Due to increased runoff from high latitude rivers and increased freshwater input from melting ice there is a possibility this oceanic current may collapse. There is already evidence it is beginning to weaken.
- Nature: Enormous vegetation changes are predicted to occur. This will impact on biodiversity and a recent study has found that climate change threatens more than 1 million species with extinction by 2050.
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| Article: “Investors urged to back climate
change awareness with action” |
| http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1874930,00.html |
By Terry Macalister, The
Guardian (September 18, 2006)
There has been a major increase in the number of top institutional
investors waking up to the financial risks of climate change
for the businesses in which they own shares, a report out today
shows. More than 225 investment houses including Morgan Stanley,
Goldman Sachs and AIG have signed up to the government-backed
Carbon Disclosure Project, which produced the latest 2006 annual
survey. |
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| Article: “Kyoto Protocol Said to Harm
Effort to Stop Global Warming--But There Is Something Better” |
| http://www.isop.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=1900 |
| Marco Verweij, senior research
fellow at the Max Planck Project Group on Common Goods, Bonn,
urges abandonment of the Kyoto project and its replacement with
a crash program to develop cheap renewable energy technologies. |
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| Interview to Andrew Dlugolecki |
| http://www.germanwatch.org/rio/sidluint.htm |
| "Climate change in the risk managment of institutional investors." In a study for USS, one of the largest british pension funds, Mark Mansley and Andrew Dlugolecki have investigated the impacts of climate change on institutional investors. Stefan Rostock interviewed Andrew Dlugolecki, former Director of an insurance company and IPCC author. |
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Climate
change should be "elevated beyond a scientific debate
to a national security concern." |
[Pentagon
Study: "Abrupt Climate Change"] |
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| 1st International Conference on Climate Change
and Tourism |
| http://www.world-tourism.org/sustainable/climate/brochure.htm |
| Djerba Conference - first step towards mitigating
negative impacts of climate changes on tourism. The First International Conference
on Climate Change and Tourism was held successfully in Djerba, Tunisia, from 9 to 11 April 2003. More than 150 participants from 42 countries and
six international organizations gathered at this event that was convened
by the World Tourism Organization (WTO), upon the kind invitation of the
Government of Tunisia. |
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| Pentagon study: “Abrupt
Climate Change” (pdf) |
| Commissioned by
highly respected Defense Department planner Andrew Marshall,
a Pentagon study raised the possibility that global warming
could prove a greater risk to the world than terrorism. Among
the potential consequences, if climate change occurs abruptly
or at the high end of scenario projections, might be catastrophic
droughts, famines and riots. The study's principal authors
were Peter Schwartz, former head of planning for Shell Oil,
and Doug Randall of the Global Business Network, a California
think tank. |
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Comment on Grist:
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| "Pentagoners: Apocalyptic Pentagon report on global
warming could spur action on Capitol Hill", by Amanda
Griscom (25 Feb 2004) |
| http://www.grist.org/news/muck/2004/02/25/pentagoners/ |
| A hair-raising Pentagon
report on the potentially imminent and colossal national
security threat posed by climate change has been making its
way around the Internet since its release in late January,
and this week it picked up considerable speed |
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| "Pentagon report plans for climate catastrophe" by
Edward Ortiz, Providence Journal Bulletin (March 3, 2004) |
| http://www.projo.com/news/content/projo_20040303_climate3.1a94fd.html |
| Professor Steven Hamburg,
Brown University's Ittleson Associate Professor of Environmental
Studies and director of the Watson Institute's Global Environmental
Program, comments on a new Pentagon Report about the dangers
of global warming. The writer describes the report as a sharp
contrast to the Bush administration's assessment that global
warming is not as critical a threat as the scientific community
contends. |
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| United Nations Environment Programme: Climate Change |
| http://www.unep.org/themes/climatechange/ |
| Climate change is one of
the most critical global challenges of our time. Recent events
have emphatically demonstrated our growing vulnerability to climate
change. Climate change impacts will range from affecting agriculture-
further endangering food security-, sea-level rise and the accelerated
erosion of coastal zones, increasing intensity of natural disasters,
species extinction and the spread of vector-borne diseases. |
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Articles |
| “Climate Change, Insurance, and the Buildings Sector: Technological Synergisms between Adaptation and Mitigation” (2002) by Evan Mills, Ph.D. Staff Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory |
| http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/servlets/purl/821635-rn1ITf/821635.PDF |
| Examining the intersection of risk analysis and sustainable energy strategies reveals numerous examples of energy efficient and renewable energy technologies that offer insurance loss-prevention benefits. The growing threat of climate change provides an added motivation for the risk community to better understand this area of opportunity.
While analyses of climate change mitigation typically focus on the emissions-reduction characteristics of sustainable energy technologies, less often recognized are a host of synergistic ways in which these technologies also offer adaptation benefits, e.g. making buildings more resilient to natural disasters. While there is already some relevant activity, there remain various barriers to significantly expanding these efforts. Achieving
successful integration of sustainable energy considerations with risk-management objectives requires a more proactive orientation, and coordination among diverse actors and industry groups. (Abstract) |
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| Financial Times: “Gains from greenhouse action outweigh the costs” By Nicholas Stern. Published: November 8 2006 |
| http://www.ft.com/cms/s/7b257b5a-6ecf-11db-b5c4-0000779e2340.html |
| Sir Nicholas Stern, head of the UK Government Economic Service and a former chief economist of the World Bank wrote this guest editorial piece in the Financial Times, in which he addresses comments made about his recent report on the economic benefits of mitigating C02 emissions. |
Read The Stern Review report discussed in the Financial Times piece |
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Organizations |
| World Alliance for Decentralized Energy |
| http://www.localpower.org/ |
| Since 1997, WADE has worked to accelerate the worldwide deployment of decentralized energy systems that deliver substantial economic and environmental benefits. WADE's mission is to increase the market share of DE technologies in the global power mix to create a cost-effective, robust and sustainable electricity system. (website description) |
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| Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies |
| http://www.ceres.org/ |
| National network of investors, environmental organizations and other public interest groups working with companies and investors to address sustainability challenges such as global climate change. |
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| Global Cool |
| http://www.global-cool.com |
Global Cool believes that the solution to
tackling climate change lies within the power of the individual. Industry
and governments are ultimately influenced by the demands of their customers
and constituents. Meaning, through collective demand, capital markets will
be encouraged to invest in the development of low energy products, while
population driven electoral mandates will ensure that governments act.
Over the next 10 years the solutions based
campaign of Global Cool will be launching a series of educational and entertaining programmes,
and inspirational and upbeat global events, aimed at empowering individuals
to make a difference. (web description)
http://www.global-cool.com/becool/
Use and lose less energy by doing any or
many of these easy things |
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Solutions |
| Article: “Paying Developing Countries
Not to Burn Forests” |
| http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11382961 |
by Christopher Joyce June
26, 2007
Many industrialized nations are trying to use less coal, oil
and natural gas to lower carbon dioxide levels, which is warming
the atmosphere and changing the Earth's climate. But one-fifth
of all greenhouse gases comes from forests that are cut down
and burned to make way for crops or pasture. Now there is a movement
to get countries with big forests to slow the rate of cutting
by paying them. |
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| Carbonfund |
| http://www.carbonfund.org/site/ |
| Carbonfund.org is leading
the fight against climate change, making it easy and affordable
for any individual, business or organization to eliminate their
climate impact and hastening the transformation to a clean energy
and technology future. Carbonfund.org achieves its goals through:
Climate change education, carbon reductions and offsets, outreach
to the public. (site description) |
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| Carbon Trading |
| http://www.carbontrading.com/ |
| Carbon Trading is a market
based mechanism for helping mitigate the increase of CO2 in the
atmosphere. Carbon trading markets are developing that
bring buyers and sellers of carbon credits together with standardized
rules of trade. |
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| NewsTarget Insider Alert: “Compact fluorescent
light bulbs contaminate the environment with 30,000 pounds of
mercury each year” |
| http://www.newstarget.com/021907.html |
By Mike Adams (June 20,
2007)
A compact fluorescent light is a type of energy-saving bulb that
fits into a standard light bulb socket or plugs into a small
lighting fixture, and right now, compact fluorescents seem to
be gaining in popularity. But did you know they can also be toxic
to your home and the environment?
Fluorescent lights are filled with a gas containing low-pressure
mercury vapor and argon, or sometimes even krypton. The inner
surface of the bulb is coated with a fluorescent coating made
of varying blends of metallic and rare earth phosphor salts.
Fluorescent light bulbs are more energy efficient than incandescent
light bulbs of an equivalent brightness, and the efficiency of
fluorescent lighting owes much to low-pressure mercury photon
discharges. But fluorescents don't produce a steady light, and
they burn out more quickly when cycled frequently; they also
contain items such as fluorine, neon, and lead powder as well
as mercury.
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| EcoLeds |
| http://www.ecoleds.com/ |
EcoLEDs are white light
bulbs that replaces regular bulbs. Lasts 50,000 hours and saves
you nearly $350 in electricity over its life while reducing CO2
emissions by nearly 7,000 pounds compared to regular light bulbs.
Contains NO mercury like compact fluorescent lights. Remarkably
bright. Operates in standard light sockets worldwide (from 85
- 240 volts AC, covering most countries). Runs cool and produces
very little heat. Precision machined and unconditionally guaranteed.
Includes a Certificate of CO2 Emissions
Reduction.
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Opinion |
| No War, No Warming, Rise Up! |
| http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091907O.shtml |
By Ted Glick, t r u t h o u t | Perspective. 19 September 2007
For months a movement has been developing that consciously and intentionally links the related issues of the war in Iraq and the heating up of the earth that is disrupting the world's climate. On Monday morning, October 22, in Washington, DC, on Capitol Hill and elsewhere around the country, that movement will become visible as large numbers of people engage in nonviolent direct action to disrupt business as usual. We will be calling for an end to this criminal war and strong action to slow, stop and reverse global warming. |
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