It’s gettin’ hot in here | ‘Climate change: how a warming world is a threat to our food supplies’ (Infographic)

Source: The Guardian

Related:

• ‘Millions face starvation as world warms, say scientists’ (The Guardian)
• ‘Climate change and rising food prices heightened Arab Spring’ (Scientific American)
• ‘World Bank chief says global warming threatens the planet and the poorest’ (Washington Post)

From CBC:

The Harper government is pulling out of a United Nations convention that fights droughts in Africa and elsewhere, which would make Canada the only country in the world outside the agreement.

…

The UN body has a research committee dedicated to finding ways to stop the spread of droughts that lay waste to farmland across the planet, particularly Africa.

Scientists, governments and civil society organizations are headed to Bonn next month “to carry out the first ever comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of desertification, land degradation and drought,” says a notice from the United Nations Environment Program.

“Also, for the very first time, governments will provide concrete data on the status of poverty and of land cover in the areas affected by desertification in their countries.”

The issue of encroaching deserts has become urgent because of renewed droughts that have plunged millions into poverty in Africa’s Sahel belt last year and in East Africa the year before.

The Bonn-based secretariat for the UN body said no Canadian official had contacted them about the withdrawal.

In my opinion this is irresponsible and embarrassing and definitely not my Canada. Though I should hardly be surprised. Canada is one of the world’s worst when it comes to tackling climate change and drought is a symptom of climate change.

You can check out the rest of the article here. The bold facing in the article quote is my own.

In a week where Arctic ice has reached a new low and food prices have spiked due to severe droughts in Europe and the United States it feels strange to think that progress is being made in the fight against global climate change. However, over the last couple of weeks four big initiatives have been announced that have potential to make a significant dent in our collective carbon footprint.

Last week, China announced it will spend some $372 billion on clean energy, energy efficiency, and reducing its use of the dirtiest of fossil fuels: coal. Its announcement also made clear that:

Seven Chinese cities and provinces will launch CO2 emissions trading schemes over the next two years ahead of a national scheme later in the decade. (Reuters)

The country is currently the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions.

On Tuesday, Australia and the European Union announced a partnership to create the world’s largest carbon market, which will begin trading by 2015. Harvard environmental economist Robert Stavins encouragingly described the move in an interview:

Given the relatively primitive state of climate change policy around the world, especially considering the scope of the problem, this is a very significant step forward. (Atlantic Cities)

For those keeping score at home, when California’s carbon trading system opens in November it will be the world’s second largest.

Finally, this week the United States stepped up and delivered a big one-two punch:

Lester Brown on ‘How the battle for water will reshape our world’

From AlterNet via YouTube:

By 2025, two-thirds of people worldwide are expected to face water shortages as businesses, agriculture and growing populations compete for the ever more precious commodity.

Map source: Water for Life Decade (UN)

From USA Today:

China is building more eco-cities designed to be low-carbon and energy-saving than any other country, according to a survey by the University of Westminster in London. The USA ranked second.

Check out the rest of the article here.

Related:

• ‘What’s an Ecocity and Why Should We Care? (Green Flow)
• ‘China’s eco-cities: Sustainable urban living in Tianjin’ (BBC Future)

Report Card: Who is the Most Energy Efficient of Them All? (Map)

From ACEEE:

The ACEEE 2012 International Energy Efficiency Scorecard will rank 12 of the world’s largest economies representing over 78 percent of global gross domestic product, 63 percent of global energy consumption, and 62 percent of the global carbon-dioxide-equivalent emissions.

The rankings will include: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union. Over 25 different energy efficiency indicators or “metrics” have been analyzed for each economy ranked in the report. The rankings are determined by a total score out of 100 possible points.

Points can be earned in four difference categories including buildings, industry, and transportation, as well as metrics that track cross-cutting aspects of energy use at the national level. 

Check out the ACEEE’s report here.

Related:

• ‘UK ranked most energy efficient of world’s largest economies’ (The Guardian)
• ‘Of the world’s 12 largest economies, the U.S. is the ninth most energy efficient’ (Grist)
• ‘Canada scores 2nd last on energy efficiency study’ (CBC) 
• Video: ‘Energy efficiency vital for businesses’ (video) (ABC - Australia)
• ‘The Objectives: Energy Efficiency’ (Sustainable Energy for All)

Getting Around: ‘Children Cycling to School’ (Infographic)

Related:

• ‘Charter of Vancouver – Children have the right to cycle’ (ECF)

(Source: ECF)

From The Washington Post:

Countries or regions that have already passed cap-and-trade: This includes the European Union, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, California, and Quebec. They’ve all set hard limits on a significant portion of their carbon emissions. (Different countries have different targets and exemptions for various sectors.) This is a sizeable chunk of the planet: By my calculations, these countries and regions represented roughly 19 percent of the world’s carbon emissions in 2008.

Countries that could shift to cap-and-trade this decade. Mexico and Brazil have both recently passed laws to significantly slow their rate of emissions growth by 2020. (Brazil’s target is voluntary.) They’ve both set up task forces to study various ways to achieve this, with cap-and-trade as an option. Japan, for its part, has set up a limited cap-and-trade scheme for Tokyo and has a voluntary carbon-trading scheme at the national level that has slightly curbed emissions.

Meanwhile, China is setting up its own regional cap-and-trade systems in several of its provinces and is looking to set up a national program by the end of the decade. Jennifer Morgan says that her organization, WRI, recently hosted a Chinese delegation in the United States to study California’s climate program, as well as the small cap-and-trade system for electric utilities in the Northeast. While China’s program likely wouldn’t shrink the country’s overall level of emissions, it would at least slow the country’s ferocious growth in greenhouse gases.

Countries that are still pondering the idea. According to the World Bank report, there are at least 14 developing countries that are in various stages of study. Chile, Costa Rica, Indonesia, Thailand, and Jordan are all developing some sort of “crediting mechanism.” South Africa has a carbon tax that could well be converted to a cap-and-trade program.

Add these programs all up, and it’s potentially quite significant. Right now, about 6 percent of the world’s greenhouse-gas sources are capped and traded. By the end of the decade, according to some estimates, that could rise to as much as one-third of all emissions.

Many of these countries could eventually link together — Australia’s climate-change minister, Greg Combet, has suggested that eventually South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and China could cooperate on some sort of pan-Asian carbon-trading system. And, the World Bank notes, there’s still plenty of demand for carbon-offset projects in the developing world under the U.N. program. All told, the global carbon-trading market rose to a record $176 billion in 2011.

Check out the rest of the article here.

(Image credit: Climatepedia)

From The Guardian:

Countries must take urgent steps to value their natural capital – such as forests, peatlands and coastal areas – as part of their economic development, the World Bank has urged.

Placing a monetary value on natural ecosystems is a key step on the road to “green” economic growth, according to the World Bank, which published a report on green growth on Wednesday at a conference in Seoul, Korea.

By making such estimates, countries can develop policies that ensure the pursuit of economic growth does not occur at the expense of future growth potential, by destroying natural assets such as water sources or polluting air, rivers and soil.

Rachel Kyte, vice president for sustainable development at the bank, said that the patterns on which economic growth had been achieved in recent decades were unsustainable, because of the amount of environmental degradation involved.

She said: “At current rates, we are in danger of undermining the basis on which growth has been achieved in the last decades. We do not believe that current growth patterns are sustainable.”

She gave the example of the government of Thailand, which has moved towards more environmentally sustainable growth by attempting to place a value on its mangrove swamps. The exercise has been illuminating – chopping down mangrove for wood gives a return of less than $1,000 per hectare; removing the mangroves to make room for a shrimp farm might generate nearly $10,000 per hectare; but if the mangrove swamps were retained and their importance in providing a barrier against floods was taken into account, they could be valued at more than $16,000 per hectare.

Kyte acknowledged that few countries had so far taken steps to evaluate their natural systems in this way, and said the failure to do so had contributed to countries allowing their environment to be degraded in the pursuit of short term economic growth.

…

In 2010, India said it would become the first country in the world to publish accounts of its natural wealth as well as financial measurements such as GDP.

Check out the rest of the article here.

(Infographic credits: Metro Vancouver, FAO)

Thinking Globally: ‘Living Planet Report 2012’ - Ecological Footprint Index

From WWF:

‎”The Living Planet Report is the world’s leading, science-based analysis on the health of our only planet and the impact of human activity. Its key finding? Humanity’s demands exceed our planet’s capacity to sustain us.” 

You can find your country and see how it compares to others using the interactive Eco Footprint calculator above. 

Related:

~ ‘How to be a conscious consumer’ (WWF)

~ ‘Earth’s environment getting worse, not better, says WWF ahead of Rio+20’ (The Guardian)