Climate Change Will Make The Next Global Crash The Worst

The Guardian - Larry Elliott

The storm clouds are gathering, but the world’s economies now have far fewer shelters from disaster than they did in 1929

 Illustration: Eva Bee

Late last month Indonesia was hit by a devastating earthquake and tsunami that left thousands of people dead and missing. This week the International Monetary Fund arrived in the country to hold its annual meeting on the island of Bali.
On the day when the IMF issued a warning about trouble ahead for the global economy, the latest report from the UN’s intergovernmental panel on climate change said the world had only a dozen years left to take the steps necessary to prevent a global warming catastrophe.
The message is clear for those willing to hear it: get ready for a time when economic failure combines with ecological breakdown to create the perfect storm.
Even without the added complication of climate change, the challenge facing the finance ministers and central bank governors gathered in Bali would be significant enough. The IMF has cut its forecast for global growth, but the chances are that next year will be a lot worse than is currently forecast. The risks, the IMF says, are skewed to the downside. You bet they are.
Here’s a brief checklist. For the past 10 years, the world economy has been surviving on a diet of low interest rates and money creation by central banks, but that stimulus is now being gradually withdrawn. In the United States, growth has been further pumped up by Donald Trump’s tax cuts for individuals and companies, but only temporarily. The impact will start to fade next year as higher interest rates start to bite. Trump is already berating the Federal Reserve, America’s central bank, for increasing borrowing costs.
In Europe, a colossal row is brewing between Italy’s populist government and the fiscal conservatives at the European commission because the budget proposed by Rome runs completely counter to the EU’s fiscal rules. Officials in Brussels are more worried about Italy than they are about Brexit, and with good reason. Italy’s banks are awash with bad debts and could not survive the sort of financial crisis that appears to be in prospect. It is a much bigger country than Greece, and far too big for Europe to bail out if the worst happens.
The standoff between Rome and Brussels is happening as Europe’s growth rate has started to slow. One reason is that its export-driven economies are already being hurt by the early skirmishes in Trump’s trade war. As the IMF noted this week, protectionism is a key risk to global growth.

China, the world’s second biggest economy, has always been Trump’s main target, and it has been affected by new US tariffs, as its domestic economy was already slowing. Elsewhere, in the past few months the IMF has been called in to help Argentina, there has been a run on the Turkish lira, and inflation in Venezuela threatens to hit Weimar Germany-style levels.
In better times, oil-rich Venezuela might have been well placed to benefit from the rising price of crude oil, which is heading steadily towards $100 a barrel. Every big recession in the global economy has been prefigured by a jump in the cost of crude, which makes it somewhat curious that share prices on Wall Street are so high. Traditionally, stock markets anticipate trouble, but the mood currently is to dismiss higher interest rates, rising oil prices, Italy and trade wars as somehow unimportant.
Ominously, next year is the 90th anniversary of the Wall Street Crash. The Great Depression that followed that market meltdown led to new economic thinking. It spawned full employment policies, increased spending on welfare, and a new set of multilateral organisations.
Turn the clock forward to 2018 and the parallels are obvious. International cooperation has broken down, economic failure has damaged mainstream political parties, and belief in the invisible hand of the free market has been shattered. But the threat posed by global warming means the current crisis of capitalism is more acute than that of the 1930s, because all that was really required then was a boost to growth, provided by the New Deal, cheap money, tougher controls on finance and rearmament. In today’s context, a plain vanilla go-for-growth strategy would be suicidal.
Even so, there are countries that are prepared to self-immolate their economies in pursuit of growth at all costs. America is one. Australia appears to be another. At the other end of the spectrum are those who say there will be a future for the planet only if the idea of growth is ditched altogether. Politically, this has always been a hard sell, and has become even more difficult now that populations in the west have experienced an entire decade of flatlining living standards.
In the developing world, the problem has been too little growth rather than too much. Tackling global population growth is a no-brainer from a climate-change perspective, and most of the projected increase comes from low-income countries, most notably in Africa. The reason is simple: poor families have more children. Birthrates fall as countries become richer.
Between the two extremes are those who think the circle can be squared by carbon-free growth, made possible by the dramatic fall in the cost of renewable energy. Technology will ride to the rescue, they insist.
This sounds like a cost-free (or at least relatively cheap) option, and that’s why almost all politicians pay lip service to green growth. But then they act in ways that make achieving global warming targets harder – by building new roads and expanding airports. And always for the same reason: because doing so will be good for growth. This is called a balanced approach, but it is nothing of the sort. If the IPCC is even close to being right about its timeline, speeding up the transition from fossil fuels to renewables is vital.
Can that be done? One of the winners of this year’s Nobel prize for economics – William Nordhaus – says it can, if policymakers get serious about a carbon tax set high enough to price oil, coal and gas out of the market.
Here, though, the breakdown in international cooperation and trust becomes really damaging. Ideally, existing global institutions – the IMF, the World Bank, the UN and the World Trade Organization – would be supplemented by a new World Environmental Organisation with the power to levy a carbon tax globally. Even in the absence of a new body, they would be working together to face down the inevitable opposition to change from the fossil fuel lobby.
Instead, the response to climate change looks similar to the response to the financial crisis: fail to recognise there is a problem until it is too late; panic; then muddle through. That’s a sobering prospect.

Links

• Trump's trade war with China and Europe will hit global growth – IMF
• We have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe, warns UN
• How the 1929 Wall Street Crash unfolded
• Nobel prize in economics won by Nordhaus and Romer for work on climate change and growth - as it happened
• Projections and uncertainties about climate change in an era of minimal climate policies 

States' Climate Risks Are Rising, Led By Health Impacts: Moody's

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Australia's states face increasing threats from climate change but their economic diversity will be key to providing a buffer against the worst of the economic fallout, according to international ratings agency Moody's.
The main risks include rising sea levels, more intense storms and heatwaves that are expected to take their toll on the finances of state treasuries, the agency said in a new report.

Climate change costs are going to mount for Australia's states, Moody's says. Credit: Dean Lewins

The Moody's report, the agency's first to examine the financial health of the states and territories, comes a day after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its special report into the international effects if global warming is allowed to exceed 1.5 degrees.
"From what we can see now, the capital spending required looks manageable across all the states," John Manning, a senior credit officer with Moody's, said. “There’s no immediate impact on states and territory ratings.” The agency has a AAA rating, its highest level, for federal government debt.
The challenges are expected to mount both at the federal level, but particularly at the level of state and local government. "That's where the primary responsibility for preventing, preparing and responding to national disasters actually sit," Mr Manning said.
Increasing temperatures and the related effects on heatwaves and more extreme fire weather are likely to lead the challenges facing states given the possible health risks. Health spending typically amounts to about 30 per cent of state budgets, he said.
The cost of extreme weather could also hinge on the intensity of short-term cycles such as El Ninos, which can exacerbate dry spells over southern and eastern Australia. The Bureau of Meteorology on Tuesday raised its outlook to "alert", rating the chances of an El Nino at 70 per cent, or triple the normal level.
States' infrastructure spending will also likely increase to cope with rising sea levels and more intense storms. Cyclones tracking further south will also challenge regions where building codes have been less stringent, Mr Manning said.
The IPCC reports have shown agriculture-based economies were likely to be the most vulnerable to the more chaotic weather expected as the planet warms.
The atmosphere can hold about 7 per cent more moisture with degree of warming – and that's about the level since the industrial era began – while droughts are made worse by increased evaporation amid the warmer temperatures.
For Australia, the diversity of the economies even with states will shield the economy from some of the worst disruptions, Moody's predicts.
For instance, mining accounts for just 3.2 per cent of NSW's gross value added economy, the agency said, and just 0.9 per cent in Victoria.
Queensland, though, has more of a concentration, with mining accounting for almost 10 per cent of the economy and tourism 7.5 per cent.
Mining accounts for about 30 per cent of Western Australia's economy but is more iron-ore based than mining in the eastern states and so less exposed to the expected trend away from coal envisaged by the IPCC, Mr Manning said.
Still, changing weather, warming oceans and shifting ecosystems may force changes in Tasmania, where just over a 10th of the economy is derived by agriculture, forestry and fishing, easily the most of any state.
Just as the spread of industries gives Moody's comfort in the ratings outlook for the states, it also implies that adjustments – such as reduced coal mining – can be navigated by state governments if they are nimble enough.
“These challenges also open up opportunities for new industries and new growth,” Mr Manning said.

Links

• Climate change risks facing Australian states mitigated by diversified economies, strong institutions
• 'Next decade critical': Perils mount at 1.5 degrees of warming, says IPCC
• El Niño ALERT; positive Indian Ocean Dipole likely underway
• Australia Doesn’t Care To Break Its Coal Habit In The Face Of Climate Change
• Driest Ever September Deepens Australia's Drought
• 'This Drought Is Different': It's Drier And Hotter – And Getting Worse
• Australia's Emissions Data Would Shame The Coalition, If Such A Thing Were Possible
• How Deadly Is 50-Degree Heat? Australia's Cities Face The New Reality Of Climate Change
• In A Country So Dry Even Cows Take Showers, Climate Change Gets Ignored

What The Past Can Tell Us About The Future Of Climate Change

University of Melbourne - Associate Professor Russell Drysdale

For several millennia during the Last Interglacial period, temperatures were higher than pre-industrial levels and that had an impact on our climate system. But with recent dire forecasts of global warming, what can the past tell us about the future of our climate?

Getty Images

Earlier this week, 91 of the best scientific minds from around the globe warned what the world could look like if we fail to keep global warming below 1.5℃ this century.
The report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says heat, droughts and flooding will become more common and extreme. It also warned of the impact on the Arctic, which is warming twice as fast as the average rise of the rest of the planet.

The Greenland ice sheet covers almost two million square kilometres of the country.
Picture: Wikimedia

And this means the faster melting of the Greenland ice sheet. This ice sheet is important. It’s the second largest body of ice in the world, covering almost two million square kilometres or roughly 80 per cent of the surface of Greenland.
In recent years, the ice sheet has seen record levels of melting - with the ‘melt zone’, where snow and ice turns into slush and meltwater, expanding at an accelerating rate.
In fact, recent climate modelling and observational data suggests that the magnitude of surface ‘freshening’ in the sub-polar region of the North Atlantic could be enough to significantly disrupt ocean circulation. This would have trickle-down effects on the climate that could lead to widespread changes in rainfall as far away as the southern hemisphere tropics.
In other words, to us here in Australia.
But history can also help give us a ‘bigger picture’ look at what might happen in the future for the ice sheet.

Warming Up
We can look back at warmer periods from the past, like the Last Interglacial, which occurred between about 129,000 and 116,000 years ago, in order to understand the relationship between global warming, ice-sheet melting and how our climate system responds.
Parts of the Last Interglacial were actually warmer than the current Holocene Interglacial (the last 11,700 years), particularly in the Arctic region.
As a result, sea levels then were higher than they are now – the latest estimates suggest somewhere between 6 and 9 metres above today’s level. And between 0.6 and 3.5 metres of this sea level was contributed from melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which was smaller than it is today because of strong Arctic warming at the time.

Changes in rainfall is registered in stalagmites’ geochemistry.
Picture: Supplied

It’s worth noting, though, that these warmer Last Interglacial temperatures were naturally occurring – a result of changes in Earth’s orbit at the time. But in these post-Industrial days, it’s human-induced warming that’s heating up our planet.
So, what effect did this meltwater from Greenland have on ocean circulation and regional climate?
Our international team of scientists, led by Professor Chronis Tzedakis from the University College London, set out to answer this question. The team studied ocean sediments from a drill core taken just off the coast of Lisbon in Portugal, as well as stalagmites collected from an Italian cave system.
This information was then compared with other ocean cores and climate-model simulations to explore the links between the ice-sheet melting, change to the North Atlantic Ocean circulation and climate change across southern Europe.
The ocean sediments we collected not only contained essential information about past sea-surface-temperature and ocean-current changes in the North Atlantic during the Last Interglacial, but also preserved plant microfossils (pollen) from rivers draining the Portuguese hinterland.
Because these two sets of information come from exactly the same sedimentary archive, this enabled us to match regional vegetation changes with the shifts in ocean-circulation patterns in the North Atlantic.
At this time, stalagmites were slowly growing almost 2000 kilometres away in Antro del Corchia, a 60 kilometre-long cave system in northern Italy. The drip waters that build-up these formations originate from rain falling above the cave – and this rain mainly comes from air masses crossing the North Atlantic.

Periods of ‘excess warmth’, like the Last Interglacial, can lead to significant melting of ice in Greenland.
Picture: NASA

So any changes in climate and ocean currents in the North Atlantic affect the amount of rainfall reaching Corchia cave and this information is registered in the stalagmites’ geochemistry.
By comparing the information contained in the marine sediments and stalagmites we found a consistent pattern of climate fluctuations throughout the Last Interglacial. The interval of warm, wet climate that occurred at the very start of the interglacial, spanning about 2500 years, came to an abrupt end around 126,500 years ago when the abundance of drought-sensitive trees plummeted.
The same trend was revealed in the stalagmite geochemistry. In fact there was such an obvious reduction in rainfall that one stalagmite actually stopped growing. Several other smaller changes are seen in both the ocean-sediment and stalagmite records as the Last Interglacial progressed.
So what caused these rainfall changes?

Changing Weather
A comparison of our data with previously published ocean-sediment studies shows that most of the aridity events, or the drying out of the climate, across southern Europe can be can correlated to cooling phases in the sub-polar North Atlantic.
These phases are inferred from changes in the abundance and geochemistry of marine microfossils at these more northerly ocean sites.
While cooling may sound counter-intuitive, its effects aren’t. Ocean currents in the North Atlantic bring warm water from the tropics north to higher latitudes, keeping western Europe relatively warm. This current is actually a part of a larger circulation that links to the global ocean system called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or the AMOC.

AMOC is a large system of ocean currents that carry warm water
from the tropics northwards into the Arctic region.
Picture: Wikimedia

 But any disturbance of the AMOC can have an impact. One way that can happen is meltwater from an ice sheet - a tongue of cold, fresh water that is less dense than the salty water coming up from the tropics.
Because of the intertwined relationship between ocean temperature and our atmosphere, this ocean cooling causes a southward shift in the Arctic front, changing moisture transport and air mass trajectories across Europe. In Southern Europe this can mean less rain - less evaporation from cooler ocean surfaces, so less moisture in the atmosphere to bring rain.
The major cooling 126,500 years ago has been attributed largely to the final melting of the remnants of a large ice sheet that covered northern USA and Canada during the preceding glacial period.
The meltwater from this ice sheet travelled through Hudson Bay and out into the North Atlantic via the Labrador Sea, and may also have involved melting ice from Greenland. The meltwaters caused regional cooling and interrupted ocean circulation.
Data from the sub-polar ocean cores also suggest that the subsequent aridity events in southern Europe could also have been triggered by melting ice from Greenland.
To test this scenario, our colleagues Dr Laurie Menviel and Dr Andrea Taschetto from the University of New South Wales, worked on modelling experiments.

Century-Scale Disruptions
These experiments simulated meltwater flowing into the sub-Arctic region using the same volume of water Greenland’s ice released that affected sea levels during the Last Interglacial and at rates comparable to today’s sea level increases (a few millimetres each year).
The results indicate that the volume of meltwater would have weakened ocean circulation in the North Atlantic by 35 per cent for the largest event and 20 per cent for the smaller ones - in both cases leading to rainfall decreases across the Mediterranean that lasted a few centuries.
We can see this reflected in the vegetation and rainfall changes suggested by the ocean-core and stalagmite data.

Could the Greenland ice sheet melt faster than in the past?
Picture: Shutterstock

The results of this work suggest that periods of ‘excess warmth’, like the Last Interglacial, can lead to significant melting of ice in Greenland and century-scale disruptions in the North Atlantic Ocean circulation that have an effect on rainfall much further afield.
Whether or not this occurred during older interglacials, and precisely how these events influenced the climate of regions beyond southern Europe, are the subject of ongoing studies.
But with mean global temperatures creeping higher, and climate projections showing significant Arctic warming by the year 2100 – comparable to Arctic temperature estimates of the Last Interglacial – the possibility of accelerated Greenland melting looms.
A dry southern Europe is already vulnerable when it comes to water security under climate projections, and although the changes we studied occurred over centuries, were they to play out in the future, it would be a major ongoing issue for us all.

Links

• What do Gen X and Gen Y worry about most? Climate change.
• Is Australia set to follow Europe and North America with an extreme summer?
• The great (climate) depression
• Avoiding Day Zero in Australia
• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
• The great Greenland meltdown
• When did the Last Interglacial end?
• Holocene Epoch
• Sea-level rise due to polar ice-sheet mass loss during past warm periods
• Enhanced climate instability in the North Atlantic and southern Europe during the Last Interglacial

Vietnam's Children And The Fear Of Climate Change

BBC - David Shukman*

The threat of climate change exercises the minds of even the youngest in Vietnam

Can Tho Province, Vietnam
One little girl draws a nightmarish picture of people calling for rescue as they drown in rising water.
Another sketches a huge snake with sharp teeth to show the power and danger of flooding.
These disturbing images are the work of children at a primary school in Can Tho province, a region of Vietnam that is regularly swamped.
They live in the Mekong Delta, a huge plain of rivers and rice-fields that's popular with tourists but lies only just above the surface of the ocean.
The land itself is sinking and, at the same time, the level of the sea is rising, as global warming causes the water to expand and the ice caps to melt.
That's why the delta, one of the world's greatest centres for rice production and home to 18 million people, is recognised as especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

Florence Halstead wants to find out more about young people's attitudes to global warming

Prof Dan Parsons: "Silt and sands delivered from upstream offset relative sea-level rise"

The children were asked to draw their pictures as part of a project run by Florence Halstead from the University of Hull, a researcher into young people's attitudes on global warming.
At a primary school, which was itself flooded three years ago, she asked the pupils to close their eyes and think about flooding and then to describe what was on their minds.
Loi, a 10-year-old, leapt to his feet and came out with a shocking image - "people on their houses screaming for help".
His classmate, To Nhu, used crayons to depict a small girl drifting on her own in a boat towards what looked like a whirlpool or tornado.
"I think the flood is so scary," she told me, "and I hope that we will not be swept away in the flood season."
At a neighbouring desk, another pupil, Chau, created a scene that seemed far too horrific for someone so young: bodies were in the water and, below the surface, lurked a monstrous snake. I asked her why.
"Because the snake can live under the water and is very scary so it makes me think about the flood," she said.

The Mekong Delta southeast of Ho Chi Minh City. Copernicus Data 2018/Sentinel-2

Flooding is routine in the delta. Over the centuries, it has played a beneficial role delivering nutrient-rich silt to the fields to make them exceptionally fertile.
But, in recent years, the floods have become more damaging; the projections are for more severe and frequent inundations to come.

Regular flooding was part of the story of why these soils became so productive

Barriers are being built, but on one stretch of coastline more than 100 homes have been lost, along with big areas of precious farmland.
A farmer who saw fields vanish beneath the waves, Lam Van Nghia, said the water level was rising so fast that "there wasn't enough time to build sea defences".

Rice volumes reduced

Getty Images

To add to the stress, seawater pushing inland poisons the soil with salt, either reducing yields of rice or making it impossible to grow this vital part of the food supply.
Many farmers are turning to other crops like hay, which is more tolerant of salt, or shrimp which can cope with more of it, all of which reduces the volume of rice produced.
A leading farming expert even warned that the days of rice may be over for the Mekong Delta, with huge implications for food security and national income.
Thomas Rath, Vietnam director of the UN's International Fund for Agricultural Development, told the BBC that "this is all under threat".
"Rice production is under threat and 80% of the rice is for exports, so it's a big economic risk for Vietnam," he told the BBC.
This is why Vietnam, along with several dozen other developing countries, argues that the main target of the Paris Agreement on climate change - to limit the rise in global average temperature to 2C above the pre-industrial level - does not go far enough. It is pressing for a lower target of 1.5C.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN's climate body, is releasing a report on the benefits of keeping global warming in check and on what is needed to achieve it.

Measuring the sediment
To try to understand how rapidly the region is changing, UK and Vietnamese scientists are studying the flows of the rivers and of the sediment they carry.
When silt is deposited on the fields, it raises the level of the land, the one thing that helps to build it up and counteract the effect of a rising sea.

David Shukman looks into how worried we should be about melting polar caps

I met Prof Dan Parsons, of the University of Hull, on a boat carrying sonar equipment to measure the river bed and the quantity of sediment in the water.
Measurements over the past 20 years have shown a marked drop in the amount of sediment being delivered - the water looks clearer than in the past - and this is the result of dams upstream trapping everything in the flow.
"One clear risk is a heightened threat of flooding," Prof Parsons said. "The saline intrusion that's driven by that relative rise in sea level combines to create a perfect storm of issues for people living here."
While he and his colleagues are investigating the physical changes under way, his student, Florence Halstead, is exploring the social implications, particularly for a generation that will grow up having to face more threatening conditions.
She described some of the children's pictures as "harrowing" but said it was important to prepare them for what lies ahead.
"They live in a water world, and that's only going to increase - the water's not going to go away and they need to learn how to adapt."

A flood in Can Tho City. Damaging floods along the delta are increasing

*David Shukman is BBC Science Editor.

Links

• What is climate change?
• 'Climate change moving faster than we are'
• Calls to speed up climate change action
• What does 1.5C mean in a warming world? 
• IPCC: Climate scientists consider 'life changing' report
• Taller plants moving into warmer Arctic 
• 'Nature-based' greenhouse gas removal to limit UK climate change

Bangladesh Kids Turn The Tide On Climate Change Aboard Floating Schools

AFP

Bangladeshi students at a floating school operated by the Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha (SSS) charity in Chalan Beel -- one of a range of initiatives to adapt to the challenges brought on by climate change. AFP / Munir UZ ZAMAN

CHALAN BEEL, BANGLADESH - Mosammat Rekha's older cousins grew up unable to read and write, their tiny village so frequently cut off from the nearest school by floods that would rise suddenly in their remote corner of disaster-prone Bangladesh.

But seven-year-old Mosammat is learning her ABCs aboard a boat fitted with a classroom and play equipment that is helping children thrive even as climate change alters the world around them.

"We can attend classes even during the rainy season, when our homes are barely above water," the seven-year-old told AFP aboard the vessel in Chalan Beel, some 175 kilometres (around 110 miles) northwest of Dhaka.
Climate change is already taking its toll across Bangladesh, a densely populated and impoverished country the United Nations has identified as among the most vulnerable to a warming planet.
Millions in the low-lying nation are being forced to adapt to overflowing rivers, rising seas and increasingly extreme weather in a country frequented by destructive storms and cyclones.

In Chalan Beel, more than 20 floating schools chug along rivers and lakes swollen by floods, bringing education to students long denied a chance to learn in one of Bangladesh's poorest locations. AFP / Munir UZ ZAMAN

Twenty million people there could be made "climate refugees" by the end of the century, a UN panel has warned, turfed out of their homes as rivers swallow towns and seas encroach on coastal communities.

In villages like Kalidaskhali on the banks of the Padma River, these forces are already reshaping lives by the hour.

As much as five metres (16 feet) of riverbank can disappear in a single day, consuming everything in its path, local government official Azizul Azam told AFP.
More than 9,000 people have been displaced by the Padma in just five years, as the main tributary of the Ganges encroaches further and further inland.
"Today my backyard is gone. I had a cowshed over there... now it is just water," said Rukaiya Khatun, watching helplessly as chunks of earth disappeared into the turbid water inching towards her home.
"The Padma has devoured everything."

More than 9,000 people have been displaced by the Padma river in just five years, as the main tributary of the Ganges encroaches further and further inland. AFP / Munir UZ ZAMAN

River erosion -- though long a phenomenon in the delta nation -- is rapidly accelerating due to climate change, said Atiq Rahman, a member of a Nobel Peace Prize-winning UN climate panel.

A warming planet has made monsoon rainfall more unpredictable across Bangladesh and melted Himalayan glaciers to the north, turbocharging the waterways that criss-cross the country.
Many have struggled to adapt as the river has turned, in the words of one villager, "wild and furious".
- Full steam ahead -
But elsewhere, local ingenuity is finding ways around the turbulent and unpredictable forces of nature.

River erosion -- though long a phenomenon in the delta nation -- is rapidly accelerating due to climate change, experts say. AFP / Munir UZ ZAMAN

Students at BRAC University in Dhaka last month unveiled a model for a floating bamboo home, one that could survive a flood or be easily relocated elsewhere in case of inundation.

In Chalan Beel, floating schools chug along rivers and lakes swollen by floods, bringing education to students long denied a chance to learn in one of Bangladesh's poorest locations.

"Now, they have year-round education," said Mohammad Rezwan, head of the Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha charity that runs the pioneering project.
Today they run more than 20 "floating schools" in the Chalan Beel area. Other charities have replicated the idea in different parts of Bangladesh, where the world's largest river delta empties into the Bay of Bengal.

The more elaborate floating schools are twin-storey designs boasting slides, monkey bars and swing sets for playtime, while banks of solar panels atop the boats power the school’s laptop computers. AFP / Munir UZ ZAMAN

Smaller models are equipped with desks, libraries and blackboards while more elaborate, twin-storey designs also boast slippery slides, monkey bars and swing sets for playtime.

Children even learn to use laptop computers, all powered by banks of solar panels atop the boats.

At night, once school is over, adults come aboard to learn new techniques for farming in an extreme climate.

A man walks through the remains of a home next to the eroding banks of the Padma river in Bangladesh's Rajshahi district. AFP / Munir UZ ZAMAN

Rezwan said farmers were being taught how to plant flood-resistant crops in floating seed beds, a possible lifeline for rural communities who can lose a year's harvest when the waters suddenly rise.
Bangladesh has invested more than $400 million into a new special agency for adaptation projects, including flood embankments, floating farm technology and mobile water-purification stations.

"It shows how seriously we are taking this," said Mukhlesur Rahman Sarker, deputy chief of the government's Bangladesh Climate Change Trust, of the new fund.
Simple local innovations have changed lives in a generation in Chalan Beel.
Mosammat Jharna, a mother of two, spent her youth hemmed in on all sides by water as unpredictable storm surges and fast-rising floods made walking to the nearest school impossible.
She now beams at the floating school anchored near her home -- a symbol of hope for her children, no matter how the landscape changes in the future.
"My dream of educating my children, including my daughter, has come true," she told AFP. "I don't want to see them end up illiterate like me."

Links

• 'Boats pass over where our land was': Bangladesh's climate refugees – photo essay
• Swallowed by the Sea
• Climate Risk Profile: Bangladesh
• Snapshots of a changing world – climate change impacts in Bangladesh
• How climate change is devastating for Bangladesh
• Politics of climate change, sinking Bangladesh and floating houses

Climate Change Leading To 'Solastalgia', The Feeling You Get When Your Home Is Wrecked

ABC - Richard Yin*

Solastagia is what happens when you remain within the same locality, but that sense of "home", that sense of place, is lost through the destruction of the landscape. (Supplied: Rachael Webster)

Place is important to all of us. It speaks to our identity, our community, our mortality and our destiny argues, social researcher and author Hugh Mackay.

American writer Rebecca Solnit describes it as "the sixth sense, an internal compass and map, made by memory and spatial perception, together".
In 2004, in response to the changing landscape of the Upper Hunter Valley from open-cut coal mining, power station pollution and prolonged drought, Glenn Albrecht, an ecological philosopher and professor of sustainability at Murdoch University, went on to describe an unrecognised form of psychological distress in residents that he called solastalgia.
The word has its origins in the word "nostalgia" and is defined as "the distress that is produced by environmental change impacting on people while they are directly connected to their home environment".
While in nostalgia that pain relates to leaving one's home, in a sense solastagia is what happens when you remain within the same locality, but that sense of "home", that sense of place, is lost through the destruction of the landscape; "it is the homesickness you have when you are still at home".
Symptoms included feelings of grief, trauma, nostalgia, alienation, depression, anxiety and loss.

While we tend to focus on the tangible losses of weather events, the intangible impacts — the psychological distress and grief underlying the loss of sense of place — can be profound and long-term. (ABC Open contributor Rod Evans)

The word has also entered the public arena with the likes of Australian pop artist Missy Higgins, using it to name her recent new album.
Since the early writings of Dr Albrecht, we have had an increasing number of publications that speak to the psychological impacts of a rapidly changing world.
As Dr Albrecht wrote in 2012, the built and natural environments are now changing so rapidly that our language and conceptual frameworks have to work overtime just to keep up. Some of these regional impacts relate to war, terrorism, gas fracking, mining, agribusiness.
But of particular concern are the interwoven impacts of globalisation, population growth and climate change with the disruption to climatic and ecological systems. As the earth warms, so more frequently are local environments destroyed through extreme weather events.

What happens when we lose our inner compass

Despair is one side of the coin, but the other is the acknowledgement of the value and strength to be had when we connect to place and community. (ABC News: Alison Branley)

So what happens when that sense of place is lost or destroyed, when we lose our compass and map?
While we tend to focus on the tangible losses, the intangible impacts from floods, wildfires and droughts due to psychological distress and the grief underlying the loss of sense of place can be profound and often long-term.
Research in the Latrobe Valley following the Black Saturday fires highlight the complexity of emotions in the context of acute loss. Following the fire and escaping from temporary accommodation and rebuilding a new home, one resident aged in his 40s writes:

"But it's sterile, it's still sterile now. The worst thing about — I don't know, everyday it's a different worse thing, but one of the most difficult things about losing everything in a fire, and I guess people lose to house fires all the time, but it totally changed everything about our place, not just the inside, not just the house, not just our stuff, but all our history. Basically it just wiped us, for the last 14 years, off the planet."

But some impacts such as those in relation to drought or greater climatic uncertainty, are more akin to chronic stressors, a natural disaster occurring over a longer time. Recent research findings within the wheatbelt community of Newdegate south-east of Perth, reveal that changes in climatic patterns have compounded farmers' worries about the weather, undermined notions of identity, and contributed to cumulative and ongoing forms of place-based distress. And accompanying this has been a heightened perceived risk of depression and suicide.

'All farmers are good farmers'
Not surprisingly the study has highlighted the intimacy of relationship between ecosystem health and human health.

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Drought relief evaporates

Some farmers are struggling through their fifth or sixth consecutive year of drought — but the cap for income assistance is only three years.

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Participants' anxieties over the weather were linked to the health of their land. For example, chronically dry conditions can exacerbate the risk of wind erosion (lifting or blowing soil). Wind erosion was perceived emotively by the participants, with many describing it as "horrible", "terrible", "heart-wrenching" and "depressing".
A farmer, who also worked as a nurse at the local hospital, provided an example of the distress caused by wind erosion.

"Years ago we had a really bad dust storm. Had a guy come in for an X-ray at the hospital and he was stressed out of his mind — and it was just the wind, it really bothered him. Farmers just hate seeing their farm lift; it somehow says to them, 'I'm a bad farmer'. And I think all farmers are good farmers. They all try their hardest to be. They all love their land.''

Identity linked to knowledge of the land
For those with a close relationship to the land, their identity is linked to not only its physical features but uses and knowledge of it. The loss of local knowledge, or traditional ecological knowledge, may be a key trigger for ecological grief.
Some Australian farming groups have reported having lost confidence in the seasonal rhythms of the weather and in their ability to know it. Often the loss of confidence is associated with anxieties about their long-term future.
Prolonged drought can adversely affect Aboriginal communities whose identity is intimately linked to their connection and caring of the land.
Aboriginal participants in a study on how prolonged drought in rural NSW had affected their social and emotional wellbeing reported concern that traditional men's roles were threatened by drought-related loss of habitat and wildlife and its impact on seasonal work. This compounded existing socio-economic disadvantages and existing vulnerabilities.

Children represent a uniquely vulnerable group and currently those under the age of five carry 88 per cent of the burden of disease from climate change impacts. (ABC North West Queensland: Harriet Tatham)

Children carry burden of climate change
More recently there has been a focus on the mental health impacts of climate change on children.
Children represent a uniquely vulnerable group and currently those under the age of five carry 88 per cent of the burden of disease from climate change impacts.
Direct psychological impacts caused primarily through extreme weather events are easy to appreciate and can be understood to potentially predispose to adverse future adult mental health outcomes.
But there is a growing body of research for an indirect mental health impact, showing that older children and youths in both developing and developed countries have a higher level of interest and concern about climate change than adults.
Surveys show that many young people express worry, fear and anxiety about its impact on future lives and believe that the world may end in their lifetime because of climate change and other global threats.
Meaning-focussed psychological interventions were cited as being important in promoting wellbeing and environmental engagement.

Our one home is under threat
In 2017, the American Psychological Association published a report, Mental Health and our Changing Climate: impacts, implications and guidance, that sought to draw attention to the diverse psychological impacts of climate change. Furthermore, the report provided recommendations to support individual and community resilience.

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A conversation for another day

Desperate concerns about climate change were raised by the young panel. But that according to Prime Minister Scott Morrison, drought relief should be Australia's top priority.

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In the context of climate change, most work around adaptation has focussed on technological solutions and infrastructural solutions, but there requires an acknowledgement of the psychological impacts and a focus also on the "adaptive capacity" of individuals and communities and how this may be supported.
How do we put a value on the land, ecosystems and species as objects that contribute to mental health and wellbeing, community flourishing, and culture?
For Dr Albrecht, while acknowledging the negative impacts of environmental transformation within local and regional communities, his greater concern was for the bigger picture, this one Earth, our one home, under threat by an increasingly hostile climate due to man-made climate change.
For him, the despair was one side of the coin, the other was the acknowledgement of the value and strength to be had when we connected to place and community.
From the strength founded on this sense of place was our capacity to move beyond despair and to respond with head and heart to the destruction happening around us.

*Dr Richard Yin is a Perth GP and a member of Doctors for the Environment Australia.

Links

• Why are we stripping our life support systems?
• OK Google, do I need to worry about the climate?
• Rare dust storm shrouds south-east Queensland
• Drought-hit households put off chores to save water
• Therapy dog gets gig at school in drought-affected community
• Drought has knock-on effect with harvest contractors facing grim season

The Economic Case For Climate Action Is Strong

Sydney Morning Herald - Editorial

If you do not trust the International Panel on Climate Change you should probably not trust the Nobel Prize for economics.
Yale economist William Nordhaus has just won the highest honour in his profession partly for his work on the economics of climate change.
His modelling calculated the costs of investing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and then compared them to the social and economic costs of doing nothing and just allowing temperatures to rise. The bottom line was that investment in emissions reduction was a lot better value.
By coincidence, Professor Nordhaus' work provided the economic foundation for the International Panel on Climate Change report also released on Monday which urged the world to take more "rapid and far reaching" measures to cut emissions.
The IPCC report found that it still worth taking the fairly drastic action required to limit the increase in global temperatures to a rise of 1.5 degrees by 2050 as a result of global warming as compared to going slow and allowing for a bigger rise in temperature.
“Limiting global warming to 1.5°C compared with 2°C would reduce challenging impacts on
ecosystems, human health and wellbeing," the IPCC report found.
The obvious big cost for Australia is that if the rise in global temperatures can be kept to below 1.5 degrees as much as a third of the Great Barrier Reef could still be alive in 2100 but if it rises by 2 degrees the reef will die.
So when Prime Minister Scott Morrison claims to be arguing from a  hard-headed economics perspective in dismissing the IPCC, the Nobel committee respectfully disagrees.

Yale University Professor William Nordhaus. Credit: AP

Mr Morrison's response to the IPCC report confirms that the next election will pose one of the clearest choices on climate change policy in over a decade.
This will be the first election since 2004 where one of the major parties  will campaign without even the skimpiest fig leaf of a policy on climate change.
Mr Morrison has responded by repeating his nonsense claim that Australia will meet targets for cutting emissions under the Paris treaty "at a canter" despite data from his own Ministry of Environment that emissions are rising and not falling as the government has promised.
While he is wary of the science, Mr Morrison appears to believe in magic. It is unclear why he thinks emissions would fall without any policy to do so. The government has ditched the National Energy Guarantee, its only emissions control policy.
The ALP's policy is for cuts in emissions which are at least in the ball park for the rapid and far-reaching target advocated by the IPCC. If they were serious, they would follow Professor Nordhaus' prescription of putting a price on carbon.
Government ministers responded to the IPCC by deploying the straw-man argument that Australia cannot survive without coal. True. It is is impossible to do it tomorrow. But that choice is false. Australia's old coal-fired electricity generators will inevitably give up the ghost over the next few decades. The issue is how fast they drop out of operation and what they are replaced with. With a time horizon of a couple of decades drastically reducing coal emissions is very possible.
Unfortunately, because Australia and the world have been slow to act, greenhouse gases have built up and it has become more expensive to stop global temperature rising at a dangerous pace. But the costs of doing nothing are ever more onerous. The smartest economist in the world says so.

Links

• Nobel prize in economics goes to two Americans for work on climate change, innovation
• Nobel award recognizes how economic forces can fight climate change
• Bill Nordhaus, The Nobel Prize, Climate Change And Carbon Taxes
• 'Next decade critical': Perils mount at 1.5 degrees of warming, says IPCC