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George Monbiot calls on the ‘last generation’ to save the planet (Audio)
George Monbiot, OneClimate.net
October 19th 2006, Oxford’s Sheldonian theatre:
George Monbiot, author and activist, laid on a rapt audience the unique responsibility to be the vangard for a changed society equal to the challenge of climate change.
Based on findings detailed in his new book, Heat, he claimed that for the UK a 90% cut in CO2 emissions by 2030 was the only way to prevent runaway global warming. He outlined the ways it which this could be achieved – if there was the political will.
(21 Oct 2006)
Climate Change ‘Will Cause Refugee Crisis’
Michael McCarthy, lndependent/UK via Common Dreams
Mass movements of people across the world are likely to be one of the most dramatic effects of climate change in the coming century, a study suggests.
The report, from the aid agency Tearfund, raises the spectre of hundreds of millions of environmental refugees and says the main reason will be the effects of climate – from droughts and water shortages, from flooding and storm surges and from sea-level rise.
The study, “Feeling the Heat”, says there are already an estimated 25 million environmental refugees, and this figure is likely to soar as rain patterns continue to change, floods and storms become more frequent and rising tides start to inundate low-lying countries such as Bangladesh or some of the Pacific islands.
Tearfund says that without urgent action, world governments will lose the fight to tackle the world water crisis and the growing threat of climate-change refugees in catastrophic numbers.
(20 Oct 2006)
Future Weather Forecast Is a Study in Extremes
Marla Cone, LA Times
A new method predicts more storms, drought and heat waves this century, but offers hope.
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Much of the world, including the drought-plagued American West, will face more deadly heat waves, intense rainstorms and prolonged dry spells before the end of the century, according to a new climate change study released Thursday.
Focusing not on averages but on extremes, the new research draws on nine climate models to predict what will happen if worldwide greenhouse gases keep increasing.
Longer periods of high heat and heavy rainfall are predicted for nearly all areas by 2080 to 2099. In addition, dry periods will last longer in the Southwestern United States, southern Europe and several other areas, the scientists reported.
“It’s the extremes, not the averages, that cause the most damage to society and to many ecosystems,” said Claudia Tebaldi, lead author of the report by the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., Texas Tech University and Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology Research Center.
(20 Oct 2006)
Related from AP: Global Warming Study Predicts Wild Ride (via Common Dreams).
Australia: We fiddle as the continent turns to dust
Paul Sheehan, The Age
The Roman emperor Nero is best remembered for having his mother and wife assassinated, murdering his second wife, indulging in orgies, concerts and sporting spectacles while persecuting Christians, and blaming them for the great fire of Rome during which, most infamously, he supposedly played the lyre from the balcony of his palace. Nero playing while Rome burned is myth. The rest is not.
I wonder what history will say about us when we are gone, off to that great absolute water frontage in the sky?
That we fiddled while Rome burned? That we were the wealthiest society in our history, worth more than $350,000 for every man, woman and child, with the biggest homes, the most cars, the highest debt, the lowest savings, the highest rates of obesity and excess weight, and the greatest amount of consumerism, gambling and drug consumption, while the landscape, the lifeblood of the nation, died around us, a disaster drowned out by the clamour of consumerism.
…We are creating deserts out of farmland. And when the rains do come, heavy rain will bring problems, not just relief. An enormous amount of topsoil is sitting dry and exposed, vulnerable to run-off. …the 200-year national project to turn Australia into another Europe has been a collective national delusion.
Yet most people still talk about the “drought”. It is not a drought. It is climate change. We changed the landscape. We cut, stripped, gouged, channelled and laid it bare. And thus changed the climate. How can we solve a problem when we can’t even name it, and thus still can’t even face it?
(23 Oct 2006)
It’s so warm plants think spring is here
Jon Ungoed-Thomas and Yuba Bessaoud, Sunday Times (UK)
THE weather really is going haywire. Britain’s gardeners are reporting the first signs of a “phantom spring” in the midst of one of the warmest Octobers on record.
Shoots of spring flowers are pushing out of the soil in England and in the even-warmer climes of the Channel Islands primroses and dog violets are blooming. Botany experts say it is likely that lilac and apple trees will be blossoming next month.
Tony Kirkham, head of the arboretum at Kew Gardens, southwest London, said: “This kind of weather is very confusing for plants. Some trees will blossom as a last-minute fling before the winter and some flowers come up because they are getting such mixed messages from the weather. It makes it look like spring has come early.”
(22 Oct 2006)
Global Warming: Here Come The Lawyers
Business Week
It’s the next wave of litigation — after tobacco, guns, and junk food. Why Detroit, Big Oil, and utilities should worry
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Two days after hurricane Katrina smashed into the Gulf Coast, F. Gerald Maples returned to his hometown of Pass Christian, Miss., to utter devastation
…So when friend and fellow trial lawyer Timothy W. Porter showed up to help with food and water, the two plotted a legal assault. Since Katrina’s fury was powered by unusually warm Gulf water, and since such warmth could result from global warming, companies that have pumped the atmosphere full of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide should be liable for damages, they figured. “To me, Katrina was a clear result of irresponsible behavior by the carbon-emissions corporate economy,” says Maples.
He recruited suddenly homeless neighbors like Ned Comer and filed a class action on their behalf in federal court in Gulfport, Miss. The defendants? Dozens of oil companies, utilities, and coal producers, from Chevron and Exxon Mobil (XOM ) to American Electric Power (AEP ) and Xcel Energy (XEL ). “This is a heartfelt effort,” Maples says. “I don’t want to leave this global warming mess to my children.”
Neither, apparently, do a host of other lawyers, in what is becoming an ambitious legal war on oil, electric power, auto, and other companies whose emissions are linked to global warming.
(30 Oct 2006 issue)
