Risks escalate for climate catastrophe

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VOL. 32, NO. 4, APRIL 2014 WWW.SOCIALISTACTION.ORG U.S. / CANADA $1 At a meeting last month in Yoko­ hama, Japan, the UN’s IPCC Work­ ing Group II issued its risk assess­ ment—the second of three re­ ports—stating that climate change is felt “on all continents and across all oceans.” As the globe warms, the risks to food production, freshwa­ ter supplies, and human health are steadily multiplying.

Some ecosystems, such as the Arc­ tic and warm-water coral reefs, have already reached tipping points. As Arctic soils and continental shelves thaw, more carbon dioxide and methane will be released, trigger­ ing a positive feedback that height­ ens global heating. As ice masses melt and sea levels rise, people in low-lying coastal areas and on small islands are becoming more vulnera­ ble to storm surges and inundation.

With ocean acidification, fisheries will be severely reduced.

There was recently a massive dieoff of scallops in the Pacific North­ west due to low seawater pH. With increased changes in rainfall pat­ terns resulting in either flooding or drought, crop yields could decline by two percent per decade, depend­ ing on the region, and with every one-degree rise in temperature, they can decline by as much as 10%.

Food security is expected to be a major problem, affecting poor nations even more than now and causing chronic malnourishment in children. The threat of famine and mass starvation is very real. Killer heat waves are becoming longer and more frequent. The global area struck by extremely hot summertime temperatures has increased 50-fold. With heat wave and drought, come wildfires that are growing into raging megafires from which for­ ests and grasslands do not recover easily.

There is a clear and present danger to Earth’s eco­ systems and civilization as we know it. The face of the planet, as well as human society, will be altered forever as people are forced to cope with impover­ ishment from loss of their livelihoods, injuries, and death from weather calamities, and spreading dis­ ease. Climate refugees and mass migrations will be on the rise as people flee uninhabitable regions.

The IPCC panel’s report paints a grim picture. However, to hundreds of thousands, this is nothing new, given all the natural disasters that have already occurred—most recently, Typhoon Haiyan, Hurri­ cane Sandy, the ongoing Brazilian, Californian and Australian droughts, and UK flooding. Scientists are warning that we can expect more of the same—but with greater intensity, frequency, and duration, and consequent suffering. The message is that we must not only carry out abatement measures but adapt to (Above) Protesters demanded more and faster action from major governments at UN Climate Change conference in Durban, S. Africa, in 2011.

the rapidly changing conditions of a warming planet.

This requires that advanced na­ tions assist developing ones to do so. At a September 2014 summit meeting in New York, world lead­ ers plan to discuss a new treaty that is supposed to be finalized in Paris in 2015. Given recent history, we can’t expect much in the way of results. Leaders of advanced na­ tions will probably spend most of the time haggling over the $100 billion price tag on assistance to poor nations of the Global South, who are suffering the brunt of the hardship caused by the North’s gross overconsumption and mon­ strous carbon footprint.

The prophetic assessment comes after 20 years of abject failure by government leaders to give the least thought to human survival and to act. Instead, capitalist poli­ ticians, connected at the hip to the Carbon Barons and other corporate giants, have refused to end business as usual, citing the costs, the alleged dis­ ruption of economic growth, and the “loss of jobs” and a cherished way of life. Of course, what they re­ ally mean is that giving up fossil fuels would mean a Reuters huge fall in profits for all vested interests.

Climate scientists have conducted study after study, issued numerous caveats about the risk of in­ action, and urged that drastic reductions be made soon if we are to avoid catastrophic climate change (continued on page 5, in “‘One Nation Under Surveillance’”)

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I ed President Obama’s nomination of n early March the U.S. Senate reject­ Debo Adegbile to head the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department. Ad­ egbile, an attorney at the NAACP Legal up, as Mumia demanded, Pennsylvania prosecutors chose an alternative “legal” option to impose a life sentence with­ out possibility of parole.

Mumia’s supporters, celebrating his 60th birthday with events on April 24 and April 26 in Philadelphia (and on

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