Clancy Moore writes: “Solving climate change can not be separated from the struggle to alleviate poverty.”
This was the message on the opening day of the UN Climate Summit in Durban, South Africa.
In his opening address, President Jacob Zuma of South Africa highlighted how the Pacific island nation of Kiribati is set to become the first nation forced to relocate due to climate change. He also talked about the vulnerability of many African nations to climate change, including Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, where they are currently facing the biggest drought of the 21st century.
With these key themes shaping the start of the talks, there is a sense of urgency and hope amongst the thousands of environmentalists, activists and young people attending the UN Climate Summit. Hope, that our countries’ negotiators and environment ministers will be able to deliver solutions to assist the world’s poor in tackling climate change.
Poor people in developing countries are being hit first and worst by changing weather patterns. The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report highlights the link between extreme weather and global warming. Whilst we can’t yet say that any particular flood, bushfire or cyclone was caused purely by climate change, the IPCC report does show that increases and intensification of some extreme weather events are likely to occur in the future as a result of climate change.
The IPCC report also showed that between 1970-2008, more than 95% of natural-disaster-related deaths occurred in developing countries.
Personally, I’m hopeful that Australia, the highest per-capita polluter in the OECD and a middle power in international diplomacy, can heed these messages and play an important role at Durban.
This includes ensuring that the Green Climate Fund, devised to help developing countries, is up and running by 2012. Australia’s negotiators also need to deliver on promises to fill the fund and support calls for new ways to raise funds such as a global levy on shipping emissions and a financial transactions tax (FTT). A FTT or Robin Hood Tax is a tiny tax of about 0.05% on transactions like stocks, bonds, foreign currency and derivatives which could raise money to fight climate change and alleviate poverty.
I also hope that rich countries including Australia can keep the Kyoto Protocol alive and increase their emissions cuts to keep warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius in order to protect the most vulnerable countries.
In the opening address speaking on behalf of the Umbrella group of countries, Australia’s Ambassador for Climate Change, Louise Hand quoted the recent International Energy Authority report which outlines that the world is currently slipping off the path to meet the below 2 degree target set in Copenhagen two years ago.
Australia is currently planning on cutting emissions by at least 5% by 2020 on 2000 levels. The IPCC recommends developed countries reduce emissions by between 25%-40% by 2020 on 1990 levels.
The passing of the Clean Energy Future legislation last month is a good first step for Australia in acting on climate change. Over the next two weeks, I hope that my government will take these next steps in tackling climate change and in doing so, help global efforts to tackle poverty.
Clancy Moore is blogging from the UN Climate Summit in Durban, South Africa (November 28th – December 9th). You can stay up to date with all the developments from the UN Climate Summit here.
3 Comments
“Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, where they are currently facing the biggest drought of the 21st century.”
The 21st century is a decade old…
“Poor people in developing countries are being hit first and worst by changing weather patterns. The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report highlights the link between extreme weather and global warming. Whilst we can’t yet say that any particular flood, bushfire or cyclone was caused purely by climate change, the IPCC report does show that increases and intensification of some extreme weather events are likely to occur in the future as a result of climate change.
The IPCC report also showed that between 1970-2008, more than 95% of natural-disaster-related deaths occurred in developing countries.”
(a) This is a series of non-sequiturs. (b) Evidence of “extreme weather” frequencies is very weak. It is an intrinsically vague concept. Reporting of extreme weather and associated damage/loss of life is far better now than even 20 years ago. Damage is greater in “developing” countries because of population growth and abysmal infrastructure.
Defining a baseline for “extreme weather” frequency is essentially impossible beyond a few decades in the past -even for “developed” countries. Useless for assessing climate change in the Third World.
The misuse of weather events to support climate change trends is perhaps the main reason that general scepticism increased after 2007: here, the drought was alleged to be permanent by many, leading to policy fiascos such as the North-South pipe, the monster Vic desal plant etc. Then Black Saturday was declared “unprecedented”, an absurd notion. Now we hear much about…floods. The infinite elasticity of weather predictions/assessments based on the sensivity of the atmosphere to CO2 undermines public acceptance of the AGW hypothesis. This drives the current political crisis in climate change negotiations- even though it is rarely mentioned.
Hi Frank
Your right that people are confused about climate change.
That the globe is warming is settled and confirmed by the recent skeptic funded study BEST. The rate of warming is very fast relative to past climate change and can not be explained by factors causing past climate change eg changes in the earth’s orbital axis or increased solar radiation. Multiple lines of evidence point to the cause of the warming being mainly emissions of greenhouse gases. No coherent body of peer reviewed evidence has managed to disprove human caused global warming nor provided an alternative cause of the warming. See the Skeptical Science website for concise guides to understanding climate change – author won science Eureka prize for Advancement of Knowledge of Climate Change.
Simply, 85-90% of heat energy trapped by greenhouse gases has warmed the ocean and 10-15% has warmed the air. The amount of energy equates to 2.5 Hiroshima bombs per second warming the ocean. More moisture evaporates off warmer ocean and warmer atmosphere is able to hold more water vapour. Result is more intense storms and precipitation events (floods, torrential rain) sometimes falling as snow if the moist air is moved to a location where it cools sufficiently.
Southern Oscillation Index La Nina and El Nino still influence our weather ie cool wet vs hot dry. Trouble is if the cool wet gets wetter and the hot/dry gets hotter and dryer. Our Bureau of Meterology has data on this. USA is a case study this year of record flooding, drought, record hot days, record hot night time temperatures, record heat wave duration.
Reported in SMH : Large German re-insurer Munich Re’s head of geo risk research, Peter Hoeppe, warned meanwhile that “the trend towards an increase in weather-related catastrophes continues.”
Board member Torsten Jeworrek added that given an almost tripling of weather-related natural catastrophes since 1950, “it is very disappointing that no breakthrough was achieved at the Copenhagen climate summit.”
Severe weather events in last 2 years have been breath-taking in number and intensity. Russian heat wave in 2010 killed 50,000 and caused spike in price of wheat which is thought to be one of triggers for Arab Spring.
Much of SE Asia is currently underwater, has resulted in deaths and expected to drive up price of rice.
Inertia of climate system means that even if we stop emitting now, the globe may not cool for generations/hundreds of years . The longer we wait to stop, the higher the thermostat will be set irreversibly.
Most frightening of all is the large amount of carbon stored in permafrost of northern higher latitudes which will be released into the atmosphere if the permafrost thaws – some of which has already begun to thaw, not to mention the possible distruction of our massive carbon sink, the Amazon rainforest ( 2 one in a hundred year droughts 2005 and 2010 and Amazon became a net emitter of greenhouse gases) .These and other factors would amplify the warming from our own emissions and drive warming beyond our control – suggest reading the Critical Decade Report.
Let’s hope the human race can change quickly enough rather than missing our narrowing window of opportunity to avert the worst because we were apathetic, mislead, confused or didn’t think it was affordable without realising what the consequences would be.
Hey Frank, have you got good quality statistical evidence that this is “misuse of weather events”, or are you trotting out more denier propaganda? Hint, if you use a denier source with no actual scientific credibility and pseudo-statistics to support this assertion, your argument will be self-immolating. I suggest that if you can’t put up decent evidence to support your case, you shut up instead. To be honest from your highly verbose and low in content output, I suspect you lack the skills to assess the credibility of statistical evidence, but you’re welcome to prove me wrong.