This year, the World Economic Forum will be gasbagging about our rapidly worsening environment. The lips they will be flappin'.
The most urgent problem, according to the WEF, is major power rivalries that are thwarting collective action to thwart climate change. No wonder Trump is giving this year's conclave a pass.
The WEF’s annual global risks report found that a year of extreme weather-related events meant environmental issues topped the list of concerns in a survey of around 1,000 experts and decision-makers.
But with Donald Trump announcing protectionist measures aimed at Chinaand the European Union in 2018, the report said the international cooperation needed to limit further global warming was breaking down.
“Global risks are intensifying but the collective will to tackle them appears to be lacking. Instead, divisions are hardening,” the report said, noting that nine out of 10 people polled said they expected relations between the leading powers to worsen in 2019.
“The world’s move into a new phase of strongly state-centred politics, noted in last year’s Global Risks Report, continued throughout 2018.”
...Environmental risks continued to dominate the risks report, although there were also long-term concerns about the dangers posed by cybersecurity breaches in the years ahead.
The report tracks five environmental risks: biodiversity loss, extreme weather events, failure of climate-change mitigation and adaptation, man-made disasters, and natural disasters. All five are thought to be in the high-impact, high-likelihood category.
This is an opportunity for pols from around the world to promise everything, meet and greet for that age-old networking routine to gather ideas for personal wealthy retirement schemes, grandstand for the public, and do bugger all about anything concrete while sipping generic wine at public televised mass gatherings. I'd rather stay home too for that matter just to avoid the collective bullshit if I were a leader, not that Trump's reasons are mine.
ReplyDeleteI want my June bugs zapping into the windows at night again. They used to bug us with random snaps on glass of an evening for a few days, but now it's been at least three years with none at all. The planet, she is damn near dead.
BM
ReplyDeleteWe're certainly in trouble, BM, not that it matters. CBC is running a story that 60 per cent of Canadians consider it a crisis that we're not yet building the Trudeau Memorial Pipeline to the sea.
I never felt ashamed of Canada, ever, until Stephen Harper came along. I'm still ashamed of Canada. This majority of our fellow Canadians who are said to be desperate for that pipeline view it as essential to our economic prosperity. These are people who can isolate the suffering, dislocation and even death already being endured by people in less fortunate parts of the world thanks to climate change impacts. Those people are not relevant to the pipeline crowd's views. Out of sight/out of mind.
Even if Trudeau had some conscience-driven reluctance to flooding the world with bitumen, there's no way he would risk offending 60 per cent of the population.
I was reading that the geological records show that as earth went from glacial to interglacial periods, each 100 ppm rise in atmospheric CO2 levels led to a 100 ft (30 m) rise in sea levels due to ice melt and thermal expansion.
ReplyDeleteIn the last 200 years, from the start of the Industrial Revolution, atmospheric CO2 has risen by 130 ppm. That's 40 m of sea-level rise baked into the system even if we stop burning fossil fuels today. Goodbye Richmond, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo and Miami. The nabobs knew what they were doing when they chose Davos as the place to meet.
Cap
Well, Cap, they're certainly above sea level.
ReplyDeleteOne of the shortcomings in climate science is how it is communicated to the public.
To bolster relevance, it's broken into timeline chunks. We're told what to expect by 2030 or 2050 and what might befall those who follow us in 2100.
Focusing too heavily on these time frames can obscure the fact that, absent some means of stripping GHGs out of the atmosphere on a massive scale, climate change will be a multi-century problem. 2200 will be a far different world than what we experience in 2100 if we're even around that long.
.. http://tinyurl.com/y7dxxf4q - an exceptional article re 'heavy oil' & believing in Santa Claus
ReplyDeleteAgain, an article you have likely seen.. on a topic you require zero lecture on.. But part of your readership may appreciate to read and absorb - retain or question. I know these facts.. have paid my dues, cross referenced many many varying references.. and I do the same with many many topics, whether sea ice and polar bears or Canada's 'dairy industry' re NAFTA, military ops, the doomed reality of tar sands tailings ponds remediation, the extirpation of boreal caribou, and our elected or appointed 'public servant' failures and outright liars.. or the fate of milkweed Monarch butterflies