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Scientists warn of changing climate's economic and health threats
Before California filed its multi-million dollar "global warming" lawsuit against the world's six largest car manufacturers, the American state government had received no less than 17 scientific reports describing the social, industrial and environmental devastation the state could suffer through climate change.
The reports themselves go a long way to explaining the state government's concerns - and its eagerness both to spread the financial burden and accelerate moves towards an environmentally sustainable economy.
Whether or not the case ever makes it to a jury trial, as California's Attorney General, Bill Lockyer has requested, the legal action is set to do at least as much as Al Gore's climate change documentary to focus public attention on climate issues.
(The Democrat's more recent midterm election win in the US giving the party control of Congress, plus the publication in Britain of the Stern Review on the economics of climate change, are both now adding to political pressure for action.)
In summary, the scientific reports - all of which can be downloaded from the government funded, California Centre for Climate Change - lists the state's most serious climate change problems as:
- Increased public health risks. California has the highest air pollution levels in the US and global warming could increase the number of days during which pollution exceeds safety levels by 85%. Currently the state suffers 8800 pollution associated deaths a year and spends $US 71 billion annually on pollution-related health costs. In addition the higher temperatures - Sacramento might have 100 days a year when temperatures rise above 95 deg F. - is expected to increase death rates caused by dehydration, heatstroke, and heart attacks.
- Extended wild fires. By 2100 local temperatures could have risen by 10.5 deg F increasing both the number and intensity of wild fires - and further reduced air quality.
- Reduced water supplies. Today, much of California's water supply comes via the snow-covered ranges of Sierra Nevada - but by 2100, global warming could have reduced the snowpack by 90%. That would not only jeopardise much of the state's fresh water supplies but also undermine its hydroelectric power scheme.
- Harmed agriculture. Today California's $US 30 billion agricultural industry, employing more than a million workers, supplies half the nation's fruit and vegetable needs. Although higher temperatures could accelerate plant growth, it is also likely to result in smaller, lower quality fruit. Some orchards may become uneconomic. Pests are expected to become a bigger problem.
Bill Lockyer said after filing the lawsuit that California was alleging vehicle emissions had contributed significantly to global warming, had harmed the resources, infrastructure and environmental health of Californians and cost the state millions of dollars to address current and future effects.
"Vehicle emissions are the single most rapidly growing source of carbon emissions contributing to global warming, yet the federal government and automakers have refused to act," he said. "It is time to hold these companies responsible for their contribution to this crisis."
At the time of writing, car companies were describing California's action as a "nuisance suit". The companies' trade organisation, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, said carmakers were already building cleaner, more fuel-efficient vehicles.
"Today's autos are 99% cleaner than a generation ago, and every model of auto is now available with some type of fuel-efficient technology," the organisation said.
"Using nuisance suits to address global warming would involve the courts in deciding political questions beyond their jurisdiction. This opens the door to lawsuits targeting any activity that uses fossil fuel for energy."
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Political climate change?
Is the politics of climate change itself about to change? Although "An Inconvenient Truth" the much publicised documentary by former US Vice President, Al Gore, attracted mixed political comment in Australia, there are suggestions that even the current US Administration could be preparing for a policy U-turn. The Independent newspaper in the UK has reported signs that President Bush in his State of the Union address in January will announce plans to control CO2 emissions and promote the rapid adoption of renewable energy. Besides his court action, California's Governor, Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger, says he will introduce the world's most ambitious program for cutting CO2 pollution; and a recent CBS/New York Time poll has found four in every five Americans view global warming as either a "serious", or "very serious" threat.
Business awareness grows
Even before California filed its lawsuit against the "Big Six" vehicle manufacturers, large companies were reporting growing unease that climate change could hurt their bottom lines. TransScan has reported before about such anxieties among insurance companies, but now a survey conducted by the New York-based Carbon Disclosure Project has found record numbers of the world's top companies are now factoring in the climate challenge. Of the 360 companies in the word's top 500 that responded to the survey, 87% said they recognised the "commercial risks/and or opportunities" the change represented. But just 48% have implemented greenhouse gas reduction programs.
Getting adapted
According to Frances Cairncross, president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and Rector of Exeter College, Oxford University, today's technology is not capable of preventing global warming, so its time to change focus and prepare to adapt to it. "Energy conservation could reduce the prospective rise in emissions more sharply than any other known technology," she wrote in The Independent. She said some climate change looks likely to occur, whatever actions were taken. While adapting to hotter weather might sound brutal if you live in Bangladesh, it was essential to prepare policies now for life in a warmer world. What should those policies be? "Flood defences and tough rules about building on flood plains are obvious; so is better insulation against heat as well as cold, and more covered and sheltered spaces in public areas, to protect against both the sun and the probability of more rain," Dr Cairncross said. "Developing countries will need crops and trees that will thrive in hotter temperatures and drier conditions - that should be a research priority for aid agencies. And species such as plants and trees will need protected corridors running north-south along which they can spread to move away from insupportably warm weather. Adaptation policies have big advantages. They can be pursued at a national - indeed, at a local level - and so will involve far less complex international negotiation."
Wild cards
Is it time to start "thinking the unthinkable" and begin calculating the effects on Australia of extreme climate change? The Sydney-based, Lowy Institute thinks it is. In fact in a new report, "Heating up the planet: Climate change and security" the policy think-tank argues that the security implications of climate change are so great, Australia needs to consider not only the displacement of its own coastal communities but large-scale displacement of people in Asia. "Even if the probability of their occurrence is low, their potential impacts could be very high indeed, and for this reason policy makers ought to factor them into their security calculations and alternative futures planning," says the report. "Priority should be given to the consequences of a collapse, or slowing of the Thermohaline Circulation and the worst case scenarios of glacial and ice-cap melt." (The Thermohaline Circulation is the pattern of the deep currents that circulate sea-water around the globe and any variability can itself alter the climate.)
