2018: A tipping point for climate change

As 2018 comes to an end, it can be said that the year has proved to be a major tipping point for the issue of climate change globally as well as in Bangladesh.

15-year-old Greta Thunberg with a sign that reads
 'School strike for the climate', during her protest
against climate change on November 30, 2018.
Greta has camped outside Swedish parliament in
Stockholm and refused to go to school until
things change.

First we had the publication of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on 1.5 degrees which made two very clear scientific findings. First that there will be a world of difference in the severity of adverse climate change impacts between a temperature rise of 1.5 and 2 degrees. It is not just that poor countries would be the only ones to suffer but all countries will suffer very severe adverse impacts with a 2 degree temperature rise. Just to give one example, it will mean the loss of the entire Great Barrier Reef in Australia, one of the great natural wonders of the world. Secondly, it asserted that, even though it would be difficult, it was still possible to keep global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees if all countries acted together to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by reducing use of fossil fuels and switching to 100 percent renewable energy no later than 2050.

Read the story from The Daily Star by Saleemul Huq - “2018: A tipping point for climate change.”

Biggest refugee camp braces for rain: ‘this is going to be a catastrophe’

New York: The world's largest refugee camp, a temporary home to more than half a million people that sprawls precariously across barren hills in south-eastern Bangladesh, faces a looming disaster when the first storms of the monsoon season hit, aid workers warn.

"It's going to be landslides, flash floods, inundation," said Tommy Thompson, chief of emergency support and response for the World Food Program. "It's going to be a very, very challenging wet season. That's if we don't have a cyclone.”

‘A warming atmosphere can hold more moisture and unleash more intense downpours, and make wet places even wetter’

Nearly 600,000 Rohingya Muslim refugees live in the camp, at Cox's Bazar, near the southern tip of Bangladesh. Cyclones, which can occur from March to July, would considerably worsen the situation beyond the dangers of flooding and landslides.

Read the story from The Age by Somini Sengupta - “Biggest refugee camp braces for rain: ‘this is going to be a catastrophe’.”

The future of climate refugees

As climate change causes sea levels to rise, vulnerable populations in countries like Tuvalu, Bangladesh and Vietnam are threatened with the very real prospect of losing their homes and migrating inland.

Vunidogoloa was moved 2 km inland to escape
 the impacts associated with climate change.

In some places, like Fiji, this is happening already.

In 2014, the entire village of Vunidogoloa on Vanua Levu was forced to move to higher ground 2 kilometres inland to escape coastal erosion and regular flooding - environmental impacts that villagers and the Fiji Government attribute to climate change.

Read the Unversity of Melbourne Pursuit story - “The future of climate refugees.”

Climate change doesn’t care about our plans - that’s why cities need to plan for climate change

Ban Ki Moon, then United Nations Secretary General observed in 2011, that “Climate change does not respect borders, it does not respect who you are -- rich and poor, small and big.”

Interstate highway 45 is submerged from the effects
 of Hurricane Harvey seen during widespread flooding
in Houston, Texas, U.S. August 27, 2017.

Recent events from the immense damage that hurricanes Maria, Harvey and Irma have wreaked on Puerto Rico, Houston, Miami and the Caribbean, or the monsoon floods that have forced millions from their homes in India and Bangladesh, illustrate that climate change does not respect whether we are ready or not. Our planet’s climate has changed and its impact will be felt by every one of us and for generations to come.

Climate scientists have, historically, been reluctant to attribute specific natural disasters or weather events to climate change. Yet, there is no doubt that warmer surface water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic Ocean and the seas and oceans of South Asia contributed to the intensity of recent hurricanes and monsoon rains.

Read the zilent.org story by Mark Watts - “Climate change doesn’t care about our plans - that’s why cities need to plan for climate change.”

South Asia floods: Appeals for help as monsoon rains cause havoc in India, Nepal, Bangladesh

There is an urgent need for rescue and relief services on the Indian subcontinent as severe monsoon flooding spreads across India, Nepal and Bangladesh, leaving more than 1,200 people dead since the rains started.

Oxfam says two-thirds of Bangladesh is under water.

Oxfam said its Bangladesh staff reported two-thirds of the country was under water and in some areas the flooding was the worst since 1988, creating an urgent demand for humanitarian supplies.

Wide scale flooding in an arc stretching across the Himalayan foothills caused landslides and washed away tens of thousands of homes and vast swathes of farmland.

The UN said about 40 million had been affected.

Read the ABC News story - “South Asia floods: Appeals for help as monsoon rains cause havoc in India, Nepal, Bangladesh".

What will become of Bangladesh’s climate migrants?

When Cyclone Aila hit the coast of Bangladesh in May 2009, water swelled over embankments along the Kholpetua river.

Dislocation: Sirajul Islam and his family moved
home several times in the five years after Cyclone Aila
 destroyed his coastal livelihood.

The home Sirajul Islam (pictured) shared with his wife and four children in Kolbari village was flooded, along with the single acre he used to raise shrimp.

They left for Shyamnagar town, 15km away, where for four months he made 300-400 taka a day ($4-5) driving a rented motorbike.

When the floodwater subsided, his field was too salty for shrimp. Village buildings were flattened and there was no fresh water to drink. So in 2011, the family went to seek their fortune in the capital Dhaka.

Read Megan Darby’s story on Climate Home - “What will become of Bangladesh’s climate migrants?”

Map of the Day: Where it Will Be Too Hot To Live By 2100

Today’s map comes from scientists at MIT, who found that significant portions of Southeast Asia, including India, Pakistan and Bangladesh could be uninhabitable in 73 years. 

Using climate modeling scenarios, the team of researchers let by Elfatih Eltahir found that some densely populated regions could regularly exceed what is known as a “wet bulb” threshold — this is a measure of heat and humidity, and above 35 degrees (or about 95 Fahrenheit), humans cannot survive for more than a few hours.

Read the UN Dispatch story - “Map of the Day: Where it Will Be Too Hot To Live By 2100.”

Climate Change Could Threaten Up To 2 Billion Refugees By 2100

Charles Geisler, a sociologist at Cornell University, spent much of his career researching where poor people go when rich corporations swoop in and buy the land out from under their feet.

In this August 2016 photo, a family on a raft approaches
 a boat in a flooded area of Jamalpur, Bangladesh.

But his focus began to shift in 2005, after observing how storm surges tainted farmland in Bangladesh with salt water. Later that year, Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, submerging communities once believed to be safe behind levees and dikes. As floodwaters inundated Vietnam’s Mekong Delta last year, Geisler’s new worldview came into sharp relief.

The rising sea, he surmised, is the one displacement force more powerful than greed.

Geisler began collating climate and demographic research, and came to a dire conclusion: By the year 2100, rising sea levels could force up to 2 billion people inland, creating a refugee crisis among one-fifth of the world’s population.

Read the Huffington Post story by Alexander C. Kaufman - “Climate Change Could Threaten Up To 2 Billion Refugees By 2100.”

Women are on the front line of confronting climate change

‘Natural resource scarcity and unpredictable weather affect women first, yet they’re often the last to be heard on how to combat it. That’s slowly changing’

The almost unheralded work of Water1st
International has changed the lives of
many women who are on
the front line of dealing with climate change.

Marla Smith-Nilson has completed more than 1,500 water sanitation projects as founder and executive director of Water1st International, but there’s a moment she still anticipates at the completion of each one.

At every ribbon-cutting ceremony for new groundwater wells, a woman from the community—whether in Bangladesh, Honduras, Ethiopia, or India—stands on stage with a large pot that has served as her companion during daily, mile-long treks to the river. Sometimes the woman is young. Sometimes she’s as old as 75. She raises the pot over her head and shouts “I will never carry this again!” before smashing it to the ground where it explodes into shards.

The community laughs as the pot shatters, but it’s the women in the crowd who feel the most relief. As primary caregivers, many women in poorer countries are responsible for trekking miles to collect water and fuel. When climate change depletes water, women notice first. Water is a climate change issue, and climate change is a women’s issue.

Read the Yes! story - “Why Fixing Climate Change Is Women’s Work.”

UK aid goes to fossil fuels projects as opposed to renewables

B

ritain’s overseas aid for energy projects has given twice as much to fossil fuel ventures as renewables, undermining attempts to tackle climate change.

The UK has invested £5bn for energy in developing countries such as Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Nepal and Afghanistan – ranging from loans to grants – between 2009 and 2013.

More than £2bn went to fossil fuels such as oil, coal and gas, 43 per cent of the total. Only around £1bn went on renewable forms of energy such as wind or solar power, 19 per cent of the total.

Read The Independent story - “Climate change: UK overseas aid for energy projects gives twice as much to fossil fuel ventures as renewables.”

'She'll be right mate' won't stop climate change or protect human rights

H

uman rights appear to have little impact on the daily lives of most Australians as it is a concept and issue the falls beyond the boundaries of “she’ll be right mate”.

Most Australians would consider they are free and clear of any human rights issues, but the reality is that those rights are being clearly contravened and abused every day in communities throughout the country.

Beyond those clearly identifiable abuses that are cultural, racial and economic, there is a more sweeping instances of rights abuses evolving from the human induced disruption of the world’s climate system that will impact on everyone, beginning with those least able to counter the difficulties of climate change.

Subsequently, and interestingly, the UN's Human Rights Council (HRC) has unanimously adopted a new resolution that stresses the importance of addressing the impact of climate change on the human rights of some of the world's most vulnerable people.

A BusinessGreen story says, “The Human rights and climate change resolution, championed by the Philippines and Bangladesh and co-sponsored by more than 100 countries, highlights the importance of considering the "direct and indirect" impact of climate change on a wide range of human rights, including the right of life, and the right to adequate food and housing.

“It also expresses concerns that the countries likely to be worst hit by climate change are those without the resources to implement effective adaptation plans. This puts some of the world's most vulnerable citizens at risk, the resolution said,” the story adds.

Read the BusinessGreen story - “Climate change is a human rights issue, says UN”.

Discredited Bjorn Lomborg criticised in Science Blog

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jorn Lomborg has argued that we should not concern ourselves too much will global warming, rather concentrate on and apply our efforts other social matters.

The Danish director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and former director of the Environmental Assessment Institute in Copenhagen has been in the public eye since writing his controversial and best-selling 2001 book, The Skeptical Environmentalist.

And now the largely discredited political scientist, whose philosophies and values fit with those of the Australian Government has been handed $4m to set up the “Australian Consensus Centre” at the University of Western Australia’s business school.

Writing on the Science Blog, Greg Laden, is rather forthright about what Lomborg says, simply declaring him as”wrong”.

In his post - “Bjorn Lomborg Is Wrong About Bangladesh And Sea Level Rise” – Laden says, “Lomborg seems to not know much about sea level rise. He once noted that sea level rise had stopped, or even decreased, by referring to a single year’s worth of data.”