Author: Milan
Climate change and human migration
One of the certain consequences of climate change is that it will change the relative prospects and appeal of living in different areas, both in the short-term as acute incidents like wildfires and floods occur and long-term as agricultural productivity, water availability, and sea level shift.
This is a reason why climate justice activists see migrant rights as fundamentally linked to the fight against climate change. Theoretically, it could also be a motivation for conservatives who are skeptical about large-scale and uncontrolled migration to do more about limiting how badly we damage the climate.
The scale of movement driven by climate disasters is already substantial, exceeding the level of internal displacement caused by war according to the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).
Even in rich countries, a large scale managed retreat from coastal areas may be forced by storms and rising seas — a development that hasn’t yet percolated into the thinking of citizens and politicians.
Related:
- Global warming damage curves
- The environment as a security matter
- Minimum temperatures
- Desalination
- Small island states under threat
- Coral reefs and climate change
- Hydroelectricity and bare winter mountaintops
- Hurricanes and climate change action
- Defending the Netherlands from flooding
- Climate change and salt water infiltration
- Sea level rise and coastal property values
- The possibility of rapid sea level rise
- Why climate change could be catastrophic
- CO2 and the formation of the Antarctic ice sheet
- Climate change and food production
- Climate change and animal migrations
- Latent heat and storms
- Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor
- Inequality, entitlement, and the breakdown of social cohesion
Streetcar and vines
The International Energy Agency (IEA) on the carbon bubble
The International Energy Agency has released a report on what would be necessary to achieve a ‘net zero‘ global economy by 2050: Net Zero by 2050 A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector.
Unsurprisingly, it replicates the carbon bubble / stranded assets argument: “The global pathway to net‐zero emissions by 2050 detailed in this report requires all governments to significantly strengthen and then successfully implement their energy and climate policies. Commitments made to date fall far short of what is required by that pathway.”
It also asserts the basic concept of a contraction and convergence framework for global equity in emission reductions: “advanced economies have to reach net zero before emerging markets and developing economies, and assist others in getting there.”
Most encouragingly, it avoids the assumption that massive carbon removal technologies will be deployed, meaning a net zero pledge based around effective fossil fuel abolition:
Net zero means a huge decline in the use of fossil fuels. They fall from almost four‐fifths of total energy supply today to slightly over one‐fifth by 2050. Fossil fuels that remain in 2050 are used in goods where the carbon is embodied in the product such as plastics, in facilities fitted with CCUS, and in sectors where low‐emissions technology options are scarce.
This is naturally an enormous challenge to the companies and governments choosing to pretend that there will be an easy technological fix which reconciles controlling climate change with continued fossil fuel use.
Unsurprisingly, the CBC describes Canadian reactions to the report as “mixed”.
Faces
China’s space program
Eagle
Blue corner
Toothy
Arches
