Climate Change Blog 13 –
Environmental Refugees (ERs) - Europe and ERs - 800 Million People in “Hot Sports” - Pollution-related Mortality - Melting Permafrost - Spreading Disease - Climate Change Litigation – Washington – Stephen Hawking
Let’s briefly review. I started these Blogs November 2017 with the proposition that human civilization sat atop a pyramid of four supporting blocks: the foundational blocks being Climate Stability, and Political Stability, and atop these larger blocks are Food and Sustenance from the Ocean, and Food and Sustenance from the Land. As I have detailed, we could not be doing a better job at destroying these four blocks if we tried. I have detailed some of the threats from GHG emissions, many of which harm multiple blocks: raising global temperature decreases agricultural production and higher food prices due to decreasing supply leading to food riots and political instability; Sea-level Rise and oceanic acidification has decreased food productivity and killed coral reefs and harmed tourism-based economies; polar ice melt and exposure of darker water absorbs heat, alters global weather patterns, both air (jet stream) and oceanic currents, has led to decreases in agricultural and oceanic food production and rising political instability in Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia; increased surface water evaporation decreases water for drinking and irrigation; as detailed below, decreased agricultural production and political instability has led to global environmental refugees and the rise of ultra-right wing political parties; seasonal events have been altered adversely affecting the migration of animals, fish, birds and the timing of seasonal rains and harvest and flowering and the life-cycle of pollinating birds, bats and insects; extreme weather events including drought, famine, wildfires, hurricanes and flooding have increased in number and severity impacting virtually everyone everywhere and harming land and ocean-based food sources; rising temperatures have helped spread diseases around the world further harming human health and agricultural productivity. And much more.
We are in the process of the whole-sale alteration of everything down to the cellular level in some cases (including microscopic organisms that are the very foundation for life on earth in terms of food and oxygen source), we are ignoring the universal and nearly unanimous and unambiguous and dire warnings of the world’s expert climatologists, biologists and physicists, etc., that what we are doing is nothing short of suicidal.
The future can be accurately predicted because much of it will, by necessity, be a continuation of that which is occurring. Scientists understand what happens to ice as it warms. And what happens to the oceans as they warm, expand and acidify. And, in general terms, how this affects global weather patterns. And how the future of human civilization is dependent on the continued stability of conditions that have existed during the entirety of our evolution. But all of this is changing and we continue to ignore, deny and slow-walk our response at our collective peril. I am not being dramatic. I am talking about facts on the ground.
Environmental Refugees:
I continually update my Blog with information on two key indicators: polar developments (i.e., ice melt, permafrost thaw, impacts on polar human and animal life, increased exposure of water to sun-light which is no longer reflected into space (the Albedo Effect)), and a key indicator of the impact of multiple climate change factors, Environmental Refugees (ERs).
A recent article supports the proposition that there is no longer a distinction to be made between political and environmental drivers producing ER. (See A https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/29/opinion/sunday/immigration-climate-change-trump.html?action=click&contentCollection=opinion®ion=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=3&pgtype=sectionfront, Warming World Creates Desperate People, By Lauren Markham). Once the land has been degraded past the point of supporting agricultural life-styles the people once dependent on these lands have no choice but to abandon them. Certainly, past land use practices play a role in such degradation, humanity is guilty globally of immense irresponsibility and short-sightedness in cutting down its trees, but when the rains don’t come, when the land is parched beyond recovery, when the timing of the life-cycle of pollinating insects, birds and bats has been thrown off, there can be no recovery for these lands, or people, in a time-frame that supports a rational decision to stay on such lands. These people must move and they are properly termed ERs.
The fact that nobody wants ERs is reflected in the fact that the UN does not recognize ERs by this name and will send them back home as they do not fit the existing definition of “Refugee” because they are not subject to political persecution.
Guatemala has a population of 16.6 million people many of whom are suffering from the effects of prolonged drought and rising temperature. Their inability to live off their land, as they have done for 1,000s of years, is producing all of the ills one would expect, poverty, political and gang conflict, and immense numbers of ERs. Coffee is one of the main crops exported from Guatemala but climate change has exacerbated a plague, coffee rust, which has decimated the crop in many locations including higher elevations, which had been cool enough to avoid the plague but now are warmer and succumb to it.
There are over 68 million people worldwide who have been forced to flee their home. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that since 2008, 22.5 million people have been displaced by climate-related or extreme weather events. It is pointless to argue that ERs are the result of war, poverty or political persecution as all of these things are either caused by or driven by climate change. The article cited above mentions ERs from Gambia, Pakistan, El Salvador, Guatemala, Yemen and Eritrea all of whom have felt the pressures of environmental degradation and climate change.
ERs from Gambia talk about the impossibility of farming there as the semiarid Sahel region spreads ever wider across the continent, drying up the land. In Yemen, years of water scarcity helped lead to the country’s brutal conflict. El Salvador may be recovering from a devastating drought which has diminished agricultural productivity. But the pressure to leave and migrate to the US is ever-present as there is little hope that conditions even if they improve will ever return to sustainable levels.
The average temperature in El Salvador has risen 2.34 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1950s and droughts have become longer and more intense. The sea has risen by three inches off its coast since the 1950s, and is projected to rise seven more by 2050. Between 2000 and 2009, 39 hurricanes hit El Salvador, compared with 15 in the 1980s. This, too, is predicted to worsen.
ERs from Ethiopia, formerly farmers, stated that they could no longer make a living off their crops or adequately feed their families. The rains had changed — it wasn’t just that they had lessened but that they had become more erratic; no rain when the crops needed it to grow, and destructive downpours when it was time for harvest ruining the crops.
Europe and ERs:
In 2015, hundreds of thousands of migrants, many, if not all, ERs as they are fleeing areas where the land can no longer support them, have been landing every month on the boarders of Germany, Austria and Hungary, as well as the beaches of Greece, Italy and elsewhere. Reports for these areas in 2018 has these numbers down to 10s of 1,000s. But, just as much of the North-East US has experienced cooler Spring temperatures than usual, the trend is unmistakably warmer over time (NYC is experiencing a heat wave as I write). So too with global ERs. 1,000s of these desperate people perish along the way each month. The lucky ones make it to squalid refugee camps where they languish because so few countries and so few people accept them.
Leaders of the European Union met in Brussels but no coherent plan exists for dealing with over-whelming numbers of refugees already in camps not to mention the 10s of 1,000s more that will continue to arrive for the foreseeable future. The political future of German chancellor, Angela Merkel, is very much in doubt as she had the nerve to attempt to open Germany’s boarder and accept a tiny fraction of the refugees. She has caved on this position.
The refugee situation has fueled the rise of far-right parties and politicians who exploit public anxiety after high-profile assaults involving migrants including the killing of a 19-year-old German student and the terrorist attack on a Christmas market that killed 12 people. Viktor Orban, prime minister of Hungary calls it “the migrant invasion” and has made it a jailable offense for Hungarians to assist undocumented migrants.
Matteo Salvini, the Italian interior minister, has closed Italy’s ports to charity-run rescue boats. Horst Seehofer, the German interior minister, has threatened to turn back refugees at his country’s southern border. Chancellor Sebastian Kurz of Austria is unwilling to aid any of the countries where ERs tend to land first (Greece and Italy, mostly). And Trump has claimed, wrongly, that migration led to a crime epidemic in Germany.
The tactics seem to have worked. Data from the EU showed that Europeans are more concerned about immigration than about any other social challenge. Mr. Salvini’s party is now leading in Italian polls, up 10% since an election in March. Mr. Orban won re-election in April with an increased majority after a campaign focused on migration. Trump continues to hold rallies where his go-to applause line is “build the wall.”
More than 850,000 asylum seekers arrived in Greece in 2015, most of them making their way to northern European countries like Germany. So far this year, little more than 13,000 have made the same journey. More than 150,000 people arrived in Italy in 2015; the number so far this year is less than 17,000. In 2016, when applications were at their highest, more than 62,000 people sought asylum in Germany, on average, every month. This year, that average has fallen to little more than 15,000 — the lowest since 2013. But this likely is a temporary lull. Only in Spain have arrival numbers risen, from more than 16,000 in 2015 to just over 17,000 so far in 2018.
In Italy, arrival numbers plummeted after Mr. Salvini’s predecessor controversially persuaded several militias to halt the smuggling industry in northern Libya, and to keep thousands of would-be migrants in dangerous conditions in makeshift Libyan detention centers.
Several European governments have made deportation agreements with Sudan, whose leader, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, has been charged with war crimes. A deal with Niger helped crack down on smuggling in the Western Sahara. And most controversially, the German (under Merkel!) and Dutch governments brokered a EU deal in 2016 with the authoritarian government of Turkey that led to an immediate and drastic drop in migration to Greece.
Meanwhile those ERs lucky enough to not drown or perish on dangerous sea crossings languish in filthy camps. One in Greece houses roughly half of the country’s 60,000 asylum seekers.
In Germany, Merkel’s rebellious Bavarian interior minister, Mr. Seehofer, has threatened to close Germany’s border with Austria to asylum seekers who have already registered elsewhere in Europe. But, as Merkel knows, this likely would start a domino effect of stricter border controls across the Continent. That would obstruct the movement not just of refugees but also of EU citizens, endangering one of the bloc’s core values: free movement between member states. This is yet another way that climate change threatens political stability and brings much of the world closer to being linked not by common compassion and understanding, but by stone cold walls and barbed wire.
800 Million People in “Hot Sports”:
ERs are not the only ones suffering. Those one step from becoming ERs suffer too. The World Bank reported that climate change could sharply diminish living conditions for up to 800 million people in South Asia, a region that is already home to some of the world’s poorest and hungriest people, if nothing is done to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. The study specified “hot sports” in six countries where the worst deterioration is expected based on rising average annual temperatures, altered rainfall patterns and other related drivers that likely will amplify the hardships of poverty.
Karachi, Pakistan, and the central belt of India along with Afghanistan and Sri Lanka were noted as areas with rapidly and steadily rising temperature. But even areas less likely to be affected by rising temperatures (Nepal) face risks from extreme weather events.
If global GHG emissions remain high then 800 million people may be at risk of becoming ERs or dying. If GHG emissions can be quickly and substantially reduced that number falls to 375 million. Either way, predicting the future is not as hard as it is terrifying given this “low” number of a mere 375 million suffering people.
The study predicted tens of millions of ERs in three regions of the developing world (sub-Saharan Africa, south Asia, and Latin America) are expected to migrate before 2050 unless substantial changes are made. ERs include the movement of people inside countries as well as across borders. Both cause disruption and conflict. More than 140 million people in just three regions of the developing world are likely to migrate within their native countries between now and 2050.
The three regions account for 55% of the developing world’s population. In sub-Saharan Africa, 86 million are expected to be internally displaced over the period; in south Asia, about 40 million; and in Latin America, 17 million. When farmers can no longer farm they move to the cities. By 2030, the number of cities with 1 to 5 million inhabitants is projected to grow to 559. In 2016, 1.7 billion people—23% of the world's population— lived in a city with at least 1 million inhabitants. When people can no longer survive in cities, they flee, often to another country. The cities absorbed to the breaking point and now the over-flow is being felt globally in the form of civil service breakdown, lack of governmental function and social disorder and conflict.
The 140 million figure is based on current trends but could be reduced if changes are made. If economic development is made more inclusive, for instance through better education and infrastructure, internal migration across the three regions could drop to between 65 million and 105 million and if strong action is taken on GHG emissions, as few as 30 million to 70 million may migrate. Again, the “low” estimate of 30 million displaced persons is another terrifying figure.
Here is a link to World Bank report: Groundswell:
https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/29461
Pollution-related Mortality:
ERs are those displaced by climate change but millions of others suffer premature deaths due to exposure to pollutants (which includes GHG). Another study found that significant pollution reductions could save more than 150 million human lives. Premature deaths would fall on nearly every continent if the world’s governments agree to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other harmful gases enough to limit global temperature rise to less than 3 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. That is .7 degrees lower than the target set by the Paris climate agreement and it is not going to be achieved.
The benefit would be felt mostly in Asian countries with dirty air — 13 million lives would be saved in large cities in India alone, including the metropolitan areas of Kolkata, Delhi, Patna and Kanpur. Greater Dhaka in Bangladesh would have 3.6 million fewer deaths, and Jakarta in Indonesia would record 1.6 fewer lives lost. The African cities of Lagos and Cairo combined would register more than 2 million fewer deaths.
In the US, the Clean Air Act has improved air quality but more than 330,000 lives in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Detroit, Atlanta and Washington would be spared if further improvements were made.
The models calculated about 7 million deaths per year if governments fail to work toward zero emissions by the end of the century, starting today. It’s hard to see how that could happen especially since South Asian nations such as India, where pollution is among the worst in the world, argue correctly that their per capita use is small compared with historical use in the Western Hemisphere and that they should be allowed time to develop just as other countries did.
Melting Permafrost:
One important goal for the world’s nations to focus on is the elimination of emissions of the potent GHG Methane. Recent studies are finding that thawing Arctic permafrost might release more of it than expected. Methane has 28 times the Global Warming Potential of carbon dioxide.
Whether or not this lab study translates to the Arctic there is no question that permafrost is melting and releasing GHG (melting permafrost releases both Methane and Carbon Dioxide). As much as 10% of permafrost carbon could be released into the atmosphere this century, enough to defeat climate change goals and further destabilize global weather patterns.
Spreading Disease:
Along with steadily warming temperatures comes spreading disease. Disease-carrying ticks and insects have started spreading farther north and altitudinally upward reaching places where winters were previously too long and cold for them to survive. Tick populations in Maine have exploded causing cases of some diseases to multiply by 30 times in just the past decade.
Scientists have predicted that climate change is creating prime conditions for the spread of insects and contagions — bringing cases of plague from memories of medieval history to California’s Silicon Valley and tropical blood parasites to the plains of Nebraska. Some Texans could even become allergic to eating meat due to tick bites.
Climate Change Litigation:
U.S. District Judge William Alsup (CA) dismissed a suit brought by San Francisco and Oakland against five fossil fuel companies (ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Shell and ConocoPhillips). The judge had ordered the parties to present information about climate science in a five-hour tutorial for the court.
The defendants no longer deny the scientific consensus that the climate is changing due to anthropogenic emissions. But the judge agreed with their position that this case could not proceed based on allegations that the companies knowingly created a public nuisance by selling their products despite internal studies indicating that fossil fuels posed a threat to the climate. The answer it appears lies in national legislation and not in the courts, at least not federal courts.
The tutorial was valuable for the insight it provided as to how oil and gas companies plan on defending themselves should any subsequent case proceed to trial (six other counties and cities in CA have filed similar suits in CA state courts, and NYC, King County, WA, and Boulder CO and Boulder CO County and San Miguel County have filed suits).
At a recent conference hosted by the Sabin Center, of which my colleague and Co-chair Mike Gerrard is the Director, a panelist with 30 years of experience in tobacco litigation advised that the path forward for climate change litigators was clear. The same factors that led to liability in those cases will lead to liability here; namely, an effort by large, sophisticated, corporate actors, funded studies that proved their products/actions were dangerous, and then conspired to cover up such studies while fraudulently and publicly advocating that which was knowingly and patently false. It may take 30 years, but justice will prevail when the facts are so clear, according to this litigant.
Several prominent fossil fuel industry allies filed “friend of the court” briefs denying the existence of human-induced climate change. In a brief filed by the Heartland Institute and Dr. Willie Wei-Hock Soon, among others, they argued that there is “no agreement among climatologists as to the relative contributes of Man and Nature to the global warming.” Another brief, filed by William Happer, Steven Koonin, and Richard Lindzen, scientist skeptics, says that “the climate is always changing” and “it is not possible to tell how much of the modest recent warming can be ascribed to humans.”
The “friends of the court” briefs are comprehensive in their denial saying, “recent changes in the climate over the past century are within the bounds of natural variability” and that the human contribution is too small to be a factor and that the data are too limited.
As part of their case against the companies, plaintiffs pointed to years of financial support between Exxon and conservative, climate-denying think tanks like the Heartland Institute as proof that fossil fuel companies willfully manipulated public perception of climate risks despite internal studies to the contrary. While Exxon no longer denies the reality of climate change it still refuses to disclose the risks it faces regarding climate change including its failure to disclose to shareholders potential risks (required by the SEC), as well as potential liability from law suits for damage relating to its GHG emissions. (For more on this read Merchants of Doubt, by Naomi Oreskes)
Washington:
Despite predictions of spreading disease, Trump has slashed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s budget to fight global epidemics by 80%. Although most of this funding goes to aid other countries, critics say the cut leaves the US vulnerable to diseases that could be introduced to the country. As the planet warms, more pathogens and vectors from the tropics and subtropics move into the temperate zones. US residents tend to have a false sense of security not realizing that vectors and pathogens are moving north and will continue to do so.
Stephen Hawking:
Stephen Hawking died recently at the age of 76. As well as being a renowned physicist whose groundbreaking theories explained the complexities of space, time and the universe, the British professor called Climate change “one of the great dangers we face, and it's one we can prevent.”
Hawking frequently denounced climate change deniers, and offered to pay for their trip to Venus to illustrate the impact of greenhouse gases on a habitable planet. The global thinker criticized Trump's decision to withdraw the US from the Paris agreement saying that Trump "may just have taken the most serious, and wrong, decision on climate change this world has seen.”
Hawking went so far as to predict that humanity needed to find another planet to live on as he doubted “we will survive another 1,000 years without escaping beyond our fragile planet." According to Hawking, Earth and its inhabitants could soon be doomed. But, as he wrote in 2016, he's an "enormous optimist" for our future—that is, if we can learn to work together. "To do that, we need to break down, not build up, barriers within and between nations." We need, he said, “to learn above all a measure of humility."
Carl Howard
Co-chair, Global Climate Change Committee
The above views are entirely my own.
Follow me on Twitter: @Howard.Carl