Climate change: Global impacts 'accelerating' - WMO

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) says that the physical and financial impacts of global warming are accelerating.

Global impacts of climate change are accelerating.

Record greenhouse gas levels are driving temperatures to "increasingly dangerous levels", it says.

Their report comes in the same week as the International Energy Agency (IEA) reported a surge in CO2 in 2018.

However, new data from the UK suggests Britain is bucking the trend with emissions down by 3%.

Read the story from the BBC - “Climate change: Global impacts 'accelerating' - WMO.”

Company directors can be held legally liable for ignoring the risks from climate change

The recently ratified Paris Climate Agreement
 is a major incentive for companies
to take climate risks into account.

Company directors who don’t properly consider climate-related risks could be liable for breaching their duty of due care and diligence, a new legal opinion has found.

Although the alarm for business leaders has been sounding for some time, the release of the opinion by senior barristers and leading solicitors confirms the potential liability for Australian company directors.

Australian companies are particularly exposed to the physical, transition and liability risks posed by climate change. The Paris Climate Agreement, which comes into force today, brings the transition risks (and opportunities) forward, given the policy and business changes necessitated by the agreement’s commitment to a sustainable economy.

Read the piece on The Conversation by an Honorary Fellow in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne, Travers McLeod, and a Professorial Fellow, also from the University of Melbourne, John Wiseman “Company directors can be held legally liable for ignoring the risks from climate change.”

Climate change doesn't rate as a threat according to WSJ

Interestingly, this story from The Wall Street Journal, as comprehensive as it might be, makes no reference to the certain economic, social, physical, and emotional threats linked to climate change.

The ravages of climate change will most certainly make all those threats mentioned here seem inconsequential.

“Australia,” the story notes, “is enjoying the longest economic expansion in the developed world—24 years and counting.

“But now the commodity boom that underpinned its growth is ending. Other resource-reliant economies are tumbling into recession. Can Australia defy the odds?" it asks.

Australia was one of the chief beneficiaries of the world's rising demand for raw material and so as deeply implicated manufacturing and consumerist world that drove the worsening of climate change.

Read “The Risks to Australia’s Economic Miracle.”

Yes, our diet is killing us

Many argue that if we are serious
about combatting climate change
we will all become vegetarians.

Our diet is killing us.

That is not just some fanciful heading from a glossy magazine or a tabloid newspaper chasing circulation, it is a scientific fact clearly understood by the world’s climatologists.

Being a carnivore has been a wonderful bonus for humans and many physical and mental advantages have been attributed to our penchant for meat.

But like most everything in life that brings pleasure, there is a measurable downside.

A story on The Guardian tells us that the global livestock industry produces more greenhouse gas emissions than that from transport.

The story, headed: “Eating less meat essential to curb climate change, says report” laments inaction for the fear of public backlash.