16/01/2019

World Economics Forum: World ‘Sleepwalking Into Catastrophe’ Over Climate Risk

AFR - James Fernyhough

 Global business leaders have identified the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change as by far the greatest long-term risk facing the world, in a hard-hitting report released by the World Economics Forum ahead of its annual meeting in Davos next week.
The Global Risks Report, which represents the views of business, academia and government, warned that the world was "sleepwalking into catastrophe" in its failure to produce and implement adequate policies to address the problem.
Environmental concerns eclipsed shorter term risks such as trade wars, social instability and economic crises. But the report warned the current geopolitical instability and a retreat into nationalism would make it harder to address longer term environmental risks.
Climate change, which will likely cause more bushfires and extreme weather events, is increasingly considered the major long-term risk by business. Dean Sewell
"The world's ability to foster collective action in the face of urgent major crises has reached crisis levels, with worsening international relations hindering action across a growing array of serious challenges. Meanwhile, a darkening economic outlook, in part caused by geopolitical tensions, looks set to further reduce the potential for international co-operation in 2019," the WEF warned.
"Of all risks, it is in relation to the environment that the world is most clearly sleepwalking into catastrophe."
Source: Executive Opinion Survey 2017, World Economic Forum
The 108-page report, the 14th annual report of its kind, was produced in partnership with two global insurance giants: brokerage Marsh & McLennan Companies, and insurer Zurich. The universities of Oxford, Pennsylvania and Singapore were also involved.
About 1000 global experts and decision-makers in big business, government, and academia were surveyed for the report about the areas they considered the major risks. Businesspeople made up the biggest single group of respondents.
The prominence of climate-change risk represents a surge in concern in the business community over an issue that 10 years ago did not even make the top five issues.
In this year's report, three of the top five risks – by both likelihood and impact – were environmental. Other major risks, such as water crises and forced migration, although not classed as environmental risks, were directly related to climate change.
An armed member of the Swiss Police watch from the roof of the Hotel Davos in Davos, Switzerland, where the World Economic Forum will take place. Simon Dawson
'High stakes'
The report comes a week before the forum's high-profile annual conference in Davos, Switzerland, in which chief executives from 1000 of the biggest companies meet with world leaders to discuss the big political and economic issues. The report will form the basis of discussions.
WEF president Børge Brende said the report highlighted the need for "new ways of doing globalisation".
"Renewing and improving the architecture of our national and international political and economic systems is this generation's defining task. It will be a monumental undertaking, but an indispensable one. The Global Risks Report demonstrates how high the stakes are – my hope is that this year's report will also help to build momentum behind the need to act."
Prime Minister Scott Morrison claims Australia will meet its Paris emissions targets 'in a carter', but official government figures suggest this is not true. MICHAEL FRANCHI
Sean Walker, chief underwriting officer for general insurance at Zurich Australia, said it was no surprise environmental risks dominated the report "in a year that's been characterised by bushfires, heatwaves and flooding".
"Australian businesses should be building climate-change resilience and adaptation strategies into their broader business plans. These plans need to be real and tangible, not treated as some 'horizon three' or 'black swan' conceptual event but as something to be addressed as part of a new operating environment," he said.
"This week, heat records have been broken in Western Australia, NSW and South Australia, and if these conditions persist there will undoubtedly be an impact on business."
Insurers have been at the vanguard of business efforts to tackle climate change because they will be among the first businesses to feel the financial effects of extreme weather events and rising sea levels.
The report comes less than a month after official figures showed the Morrison government was set to miss its 2030 carbon emissions reduction targets by a huge margin, contradicting its claim it will meet the Paris Agreement targets "in a canter".

The risks
Respondents rated "extreme weather events" and "failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation" as by far the two most serious risks in terms of likelihood and impact.
Water crises, biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and natural disasters were also high on the list.
Source: Global Risks Perception Survey 2017-2018, World Economic Forum
The risk of cyber attacks was the only issue unrelated to climate change to score above average in both impact and likelihood categories.
The survey showed "weapons of mass destruction" was considered the risk that would have the single biggest impact, but least likely to eventuate.
Failure of national governance and profound social instability were considered far lower long-term risks than environmental catastrophe, scoring an average rating on likelihood, and below average on impact.
Terrorist attacks, unemployment, state collapse and energy price were all considered below-average risks on both likelihood and impact scales.
Asset bubbles in major economies and data fraud or theft were considered above average in likelihood but below average in impact.
Breakdown of critical information infrastructure and outbreak of infectious disease were considered high impact but below average in likelihood.
While environmental risks dominated the long-term outlook, the very short term – over the next year – was dominated by concerns relating to geopolitical tensions over trade, as well cyber security.

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'Drought, Climate Change And Mismanagement': What Experts Think Caused The Death Of A Million Menindee Fish

ABC - Nick Kilvert

(Supplied: Graham McCrab)
The sight of more than a million fish floating belly up on the Darling River at Menindee has thrown doubt over the management of the Murray-Darling Basin.
Experts say irrigators are taking too much water from the system, and the Murray-Darling Basin Authority has mismanaged water flows.
But New South Wales Water Minister Niall Blair says drought is to blame.
With more fish likely to die, here's what we know about the mass deaths and what some independent experts have had to say.

Where are fish dying?
A million fish were found dead at Menindee Lakes last week.
It's a series of seven lakes fed by the Darling River, about 90 kilometres south-east of Broken Hill in western New South Wales.
The Menindee Lakes, south of Broken Hill, are connected to the Darling River.
It's believed to be one of the largest fish kills ever recorded in Australia.
Then a smaller kill of about 60 fish was reported at Lake Hume yesterday, on the NSW-Victoria border. But the cause of that kill is still unclear.

What killed the fish?
A variety of factors were at play at Menindee. Water levels were very low, the system had stopped flowing, and temperatures were high after a long spell of hot weather.
This created ideal conditions for blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) to grow, and it "bloomed" out of control.
But it wasn't the algae that killed the fish.
A cold front hit the region, which dropped the water temperature in the river, killing the algal bloom.
The bacteria that feeds on dying algae then exploded out of control, and sucked all the oxygen from the water.
When the oxygen levels dropped too low, the fish drowned.

So who or what is to blame?
The blame game began almost immediately after the Menindee fish kill was reported.


(ABC News)

Farmers Rob McBride and Dick Arnold, whose video of dead Murray cod went viral, pointed the finger at cotton growers and politicians.
But others blame mismanagement by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MDBA), and the NSW Government blames drought.
The big question is: why was the river in such a state that a blue-green algae outbreak of this scale could occur?
Here's what four experts working in the fields of river ecology, policy, management and economics told us.

1. Expert in water economics, environment and policy
Adjunct Professor John Williams from the Australian National University said you couldn't blame the drought.
"To manage a river you've got to be able to manage it through a drought without killing all the fish," Professor Williams said.
"We didn't put enough environmental water aside, and then we've continually eroded the little we did allocate with the recent amendments both in the north and to the south."
(Emma Brown)
Environmental water is water set aside to be released into the river system when needed.
In 2018, the Turnbull government won support from Labor to amend the amount of environmental water allocated to the system, while the Greens and some senators were opposed.
The amendments cut 605 billion litres a year that were allocated from the southern basin's environmental water flows, and 70 billion litres a year from the northern basin's flows.
Professor Williams said if more environmental water was allocated to the system, it could be used in times of drought to help flush the system, reduce nutrient levels, help drop water temperatures and oxygenate the water.
"Yes, it is hard to manage rivers like the Darling through drought, but that's Australia. If you haven't got a management plan that can manage the water through drought in the Darling, you haven't got a plan," he said.
"We're taking a hell of a lot of water out. We had good flows 18 months ago.
"We want working rivers, we want irrigation, but we need to know how much we can take and regulate it pretty strongly."

2. Expert in conservation biology, wetland and river management
Professor Richard Kingsford from the University of New South Wales said farmers and irrigators were suffering from the drought, but water management was a big issue.
"Certainly the drought is a contributing factor. The bigger issue is that this has been coming for a long time in the Darling," he said.
"Over the last 20 or 30 years, we've reduced flows coming into the Menindee lakes from upstream and down the Darling by almost 50 per cent. And it means there's less water in the river than there used to be."
As well as extracting water from the river, licences allow some irrigators to capture overland flows.
Overland-flow capture means diverting rainwater into storage before it reaches the river, which in turn leads to less water entering the system.
"Some cotton growers in the Darling River tributaries have managed to capture some of the water in the recent rains that have occurred, and that's part of the licencing system that allows them to do that, to harvest those flows," he said.
(Facebook: Debbie Newitt)
3. Expert in water policy reform
Professor Michael Young from the University of Adelaide said the Murray-Darling Basin Authority had failed to plan for lean times.
"We've put a lot of effort into debating what is called the 'sustainable diversion limits', which is working out the maximum amount that can be taken when the tank is full," he said.
"We've put very, very little effort into working out how to manage times of low flow and who's responsible for that."
In the United Kingdom, there is a policy called "hands-off flow", where water is released at the top of a system and that water cannot be extracted as it works its way downstream.
But in Australia, things are different.
"In much of the Darling at the moment we don't have mechanisms in place to shepherd water through the system," Professor Young said.
"The licences people hold are often a function of the height of the river. If one person leaves water in the river, the next person says, 'thankyou I'll take some more'."

4. Expert in ecology, management and restoration of aquatic ecosystems
Professor Robyn Watts from Charles Sturt University said that drought, climate change and mismanagement had all contributed to the state of the river.
"There's a lot of complexity around this fish kill," she said.
"It's hard to know if that could be avoided because there's so much complexity around the Menindee Lakes system in terms of who's been taking water upstream and whether it's been taken legally."
But she said there were things that could be done in the short term to avoid more fish kills.
(Supplied)
During previous events, locals have improvised their own aerator systems, pumping oxygen into affected waterholes and moving cooler, deep water to the surface.
"Where these refuges were created … we got the most adults and the most fish larvae," she said.
Yesterday, the New South Wales Government announced it would be installing aerators at a number of sites across the state.

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Scientists Issue Dire Warning In New Study Finding Last Year Was Likely The Hottest On Record

ThinkProgress - Joe Romm

“It is too late to stop serious global warming," warns scientist.

An infrared image of Hurricane Harvey just prior to making landfall August 25, 2017 along the Texas coast.
CREDIT: NOAA via Getty Images.
Last year was very likely the hottest year on record, according to the authors of a new study in the journal Science.
The study examined “multiple lines of evidence from four independent groups” measuring ocean heat and concluded “ocean warming is accelerating.” Researchers found the rate of warming for the upper 2,000 meters of ocean has increased by more than 50 percent since 1991.
As a result, “2018 is shaping up to be the hottest for the oceans as a whole, and therefore for the Earth,” a press release accompanying the study explains.
“Global warming is here, and has major consequences already,” it adds, bluntly. “There is no doubt, none!”
The speed up of ocean warming can be seen in the chart below, provided to ThinkProgress by the study’s lead author, Dr. Lijing Cheng of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP), Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Ocean heat content versus CO2 concentrations. CREDIT: Lijing Chen, IAP

The measurement of ocean heat content (OHC) has gotten much more accurate in recent years, something the authors were able to take advantage of.
“For over a decade, more than 3,000 floats have provided near-global data coverage for the upper 2,000 meters of the ocean,” the study explains. This new Argo system of floating measurement devices provides “superior observational coverage and reduced uncertainties compared to earlier times.”
These high-quality Argo observations combined with other independent, older ways of measuring OHC, have enabled the authors to provide “the context of the record-breaking recent observations to be properly established.”
Often, most people think of global warming as solely about surface air temperatures. But, as the authors point out, there are two reasons ocean heat content are a much better measure of actual global warming than surface air temperatures, which have traditionally been used to determine what years are the hottest on record.
First, as the study states, the oceans take up “about 93 percent of the Earth’s energy imbalance created by increasing heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere from human activities.” So the overwhelming majority of warming ends up in the oceans.
Second, “ocean heat content is not bothered much by weather fluctuations that do, however, affect the surface temperatures.” And OHC is only “somewhat affected by El Niño events,” which can have a big, short-term impact on surface temperatures.
All of this makes ocean heat content a truer and more stable measure of how fast the Earth is warming under climate change.
Thus, when the data show that 2018 has set the record for ocean heat content, that tells us 2018 sets the record for hottest year.
As co-author Kevin Trenberth, a distinguished senior scientist in the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, told ThinkProgress, “global warming is close to ocean warming and 2018 will be the warmest year on record, followed by 2017.” Trenberth, a leading expert on the connection between climate change and extreme weather, pointed out that “one of the warmest spots was where Hurricane Florence developed this past year [in the Atlantic] and where Hurricane Harvey developed the previous year [in the Gulf]. The warm water fuels the evaporation and moisture for storms.”
It is “too late to stop ocean warming in this century because ocean response” is so slow, warned Cheng. Water stores a lot a heat, so its temperature fluctuates much more gradually. But, she said, we can slow the rate of warming if we “act as soon as possible to reduce carbon emission.”
As Cheng’s chart shows, ocean heat content is very strongly linked to global CO2 levels. Unfortunately, CO2 levels (or concentrations) won’t stop rising until the world reduces annual global CO2 emissions to near zero, which is in fact the ultimate goal of the December 2015 Paris climate accord.
But we are a long way from releasing zero emissions.
“While there still is time to do something to slow this process down, it is too late to stop serious global warming,” study co-author John Abraham, a professor of thermal sciences at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, told ThinkProgress,
Abraham warned that global warming “is happening faster than we previously thought.”
“We are also seeing the impacts, from superstorm hurricanes and typhoons, to drought and deadly wildfires,” he continued. “We are paying the consequences for ignoring the science for decades. What a terrible legacy the denialists have left us and our children.”

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How Science Fiction Helps Readers Understand Climate Change

BBC - Diego Arguedas Ortiz

Can imagined futures of drowned cities and solar utopias help us grasp the complexity of climate change?

It’s the year 2140 and two kids ride their skimboards in the heart of Manhattan, near the point where Sixth Avenue meets Broadway. If you are familiar with this junction you would know it is far from the US’ current coastline. But in Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel New York 2140, Manhattan is flooded after unabated climate change causes the sea level to rise by 50ft (15.25m). The amphibian city is now a SuperVenice, a grid of canals populated by vaporettos where characters must learn how to deal with a world both familiar and unrecognisable to us. Mid-Manhattan skimboading is all too possible in this future.
Robinson’s 2017 climate-fiction novel belongs to a growing cadre of works about drowned nations, wind farm utopias or scarred metropolises decades into the future. As diplomats draft the rulebook for the global response to the climate crisis and engineers race to produce better solar panels, writers have found their role, too: telling what Robinson calls “the story of the next century”. In doing that, they might be helping readers across the world comprehend the situation in which we currently find ourselves.
Kim Stanley Robinson imagines Manhattan not lined with streets, but as a grid of canals (Credit: Getty)
Climate change is a notoriously elusive crisis to make sense of, particularly compared to other human-impact catastrophes. Drop some toxic chemicals in a river now and you will see dead fish within days, but what do you witness when you release carbon dioxide? And while, in 2018, a report by UN climate scientists stated that we are heading towards a catastrophe, who can truly imagine what that looks like?
Science fiction gets people thinking in a way that another report on climate change doesn’t – Shelley Streeby
This is where fiction comes in: it brings the abstract data closer to home by focusing on the faces and stories in these futures. Show readers a detailed and textured account of a climate-changed future, says Robinson, and they have an easier time imagining it. It feels real: characters in these novels worry about the welfare of their children, meddle in extra-marital affairs and grapple with train schedules, just as readers would on their daily lives.

Abstract futures
“Science fiction gets people thinking in a way that another report on climate change doesn’t,” says Shelley Streeby, a Professor of Literature and Ethnic Studies at UC San Diego. “It helps people feel about what might be coming, but also about the present.”
The numbers for climate fiction, or cli-fi as some people call it, are hard to pinpoint – but they are growing fast. A 2016 review tallied 50 novels dealing specifically with man-made climate change and its effects, with 20 appearing in the previous five years, although this number includes all types of novels. That includes John Lanchester’s new environmental fable, The Wall, which has been described as “disquieting and quite good fun at the same time”.
Climate fiction brings abstract issues, like carbon dioxide release, closer to home (Credit: Getty)
Science fiction’s penchant for extrapolation gives the genre an extra appeal, says Streeby. It is about taking certain conditions that exist nowadays, extending them into the future and throwing a bunch of characters into their midst.
Any near-future science fiction that does not engage with climate change is fantasy – Sarena Ulibarri
It might be hard, for instance, to imagine the implications of a world where temperature has risen by more than 2C, an increase scientists conclude would disrupt much of life on Earth. It is also hard to make sense of the fact that our current lifestyle, without changes, can lead to such a situation. With sci-fi you can take current conditions forward by several decades and imagine what commuting or buying bread in 2080 looks like.
But the current movement also deals differently with the possible futures. Whenever climate change filters into mainstream culture, particularly in Hollywood movies like The Day After Tomorrowor 2012, it often does so as catastrophe. Most of the fictional literature about climate change looks beyond that and asks: ‘How is the world after the crisis?’
The film The Day After Tomorrow imagines a climate change-ravaged future as a catastrophe (Credit: Alamy)
A hopeful future?
One possible answer comes from ‘solarpunk’, a movement of writers that actively imagine a better future through their work. Authors like the New Mexico-based Sarena Ulibarri dislike the doom-and-gloom tone of dystopian literature, deciding instead to show what a fairer world – powered by renewables – could look like. The genre took its first steps in 2012 when a Brazilian publisher edited a short story compilation and since then it has flourished, mostly in blogs and on Tumblr.
“Any near-future science fiction that does not engage with climate change is fantasy,” says Ulibarri, who believes you can take up the challenge on your own terms.
Kim Stanley Robinson calls his approach “angry optimism” (Credit: Alamy)
Because the what-could-happen opens so many doors, science fiction writers often engage in political critique as an alternative to climate dystopia. In a scene from Robinson’s New York 2140, one of the characters is bashing the economic system, arguing that “the world is a mess because of the assholes who think they can steal everything and get away with it. So we have to overwhelm them and get back to justice.”
After his interlocutor asks him whether conditions are ripe for such a move, he replies: “Very ripe.People are scared for their kids. That’s the moments things can tip.” One could wonder whether the characters are talking about concerned parents in 2140 or in 2018 and, as with most good dialogue in science fiction, it is hard to know. Robinson calls his approach “angry optimism”: it can get better, yes, but only if people are ready to shake things up.

An intersectional future?
But some people have more shaking up to do than others. For much of science fiction’s history, white men have dominated the genre – with the figure of the male scientist or the white explorer commonplace – and the voices of women, indigenous groups and people of colour have been marginalised, even if they were also writing and publishing. Just as important as the story, it becomes relevant who writes it and who is featured in it, Streeby argues in her recent book. She claims that decolonising the imagination, in this case related to climate change, is a crucial task ahead.
In a society where climate change impacts marginalized groups disproportionately, imagining the future through climate fiction becomes an act of resistance.
“We need to consider the multiple versions of the future we get from different groups,” explains Streeby, who prefers the plural ‘futures’ to the singular ‘future’. “If we let these stories proliferate and we hear them, they will give us a lot more possibilities and answers than if we imagine that there is only one.”
She mentions the African-American novelist Octavia E Butler as an example. Her 1993 novel Parable of the Sower follows a black teenager as she navigates a drought-ravaged California in the mid-2020s. By placing a black female character in the midst of her climate future, Butler paved the way for other writers and readers to do the same. The future could be female and it could be black, Butler showed.
The future could be female and it could be black, showed Octavia E Butler (Credit: Getty)
Voices from indigenous communities or people of colour, like that of Butler, are not a novelty. They have been writing about their futures for decades, says British writer and curator Angela Chan, even if mainstream Western narratives have only begun paying attention to them recently. In a society where climate change disproportionately impacts marginalised groups, imagining the future through climate fiction becomes an act of resistance. “People have been speculating about the future because they are oppressed,” says Chan.
Part of the Chinese diaspora in the UK, Chan has recently explored how science fiction writers in China make sense of present realities and future challenges through climate change stories. Chan cautions against looking at Chinese literature through a Western lens: China has a huge scene on its own, including the magazine Science Fiction World, which lays claim to being the world’s most popular sci-fi periodical.Rather, she wants to explore who climate fiction is speaking for and whether it can open doors and spaces for those excluded.
In the quest to adopt climate change as a topic, writers are doing what they do best: trying to tell a good story. Sometimes they write with a touch of optimism as they negotiate the current crisis. But even with this optimism, these writers want to make sure the world knows they, at least, are paying attention. As one character in Robinson’s New York 2140 concludes, the scientists “published their papers, and shouted and waved their arms, a few canny and deeply thoughtful sci-fi writers wrote up lurid accounts of such an eventuality, and the rest of civilization went torching the planet like a Burning Man pyromasterpiece. Really.”

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