Category Archives: Environment news

Bangladesh – the great climate change exodus

Posted on by
2

Thousands of rural families in Bangladesh are being pushed into Dhaka and other crowded cities as their land and houses have been washed away, the New Internationalist reports. But by 2070, Dhaka itself will be one of the most climate-stressed cities on earth, according to the UN. Heat stress, river and coastal floods are likely if climate change continues unabated.

Bangladesh is calling for a new UN refugee convention to recognise climate refugees. In the meantime, Bangladeshis attempting to flee across the border to India face a fence-building programme along the border and gun-toting border guards who have shot a estimated 10,000 people trying to cross the border without papers in the last 10 years.

New report says companies must pay for their environmental impacts

Posted on by
Reply

The Stern Report on Climate Change, which formed the basis for the UK’s 2008 Climate Change Act, says that climate change is caused by companies’ avoiding paying for the costs of the damage their greenhouse gas pollution causes. This is called “externalising” costs – putting them outside the company, so that something or someone else – the environment, customers, the public or employees – have to pay for them.

A new report, Expect the Unexpected, by the accountancy firm KPMG says that companies are externalising all kinds of environmental costs, not just the costs of climate change caused by their greenhouse gas emissions. The environmental impacts of industries like farming and food, beverages, mining and so on are worsening, but companies are avoiding paying for the damage they cause.
Continue reading →

Sheffield Uni study shows Polar permafrosts could thaw and release stored carbon

Posted on by
Reply

Researchers at Sheffield University, working with other universities, have studied sudden climate warmings  that occurred around 55 million years ago and concluded that they were triggered by the release of carbon that had been stored in Polar region permafrosts.

This research suggests that a similar risk exists today, since rises in the earth’s average temperature could cause Polar permafrosts to thaw and release the carbon that is currently stored in them as decayed, frozen vegetation.
Continue reading →

Finance is king

Posted on by
Reply

This is a clip of Nick Dearden, director of the Jubilee Debt Campaign, speaking about the financialisation of everything at the conference on An economy for the 99% in Manchester the other weekend.

For instance, although he doesn’t mention the “green economy”, plans to cost “ecosystem services” is a move that brings everything that keeps the planet alive within the realm of finance and financial services.
Continue reading →

The importance of the commons in tackling climate change

Posted on by
Reply

From David Bollier’s blog

Planning for the Rio+20 Conference: Enter the Commons?

Sunday, February 5, 2012

The Rio+20 conference in Rio de Janeiro this June will be a major event in the world’s ecological history.  The event, officially the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, will provide an opportunity for the world’s nations to take stock of what has happened to the environment since an earlier, landmark conference in Rio in 1992 – climate change, loss of biodiversity, species extinctions, desertification, etc., etc. – and to plot ambitious strategies to save the planet in the coming decades.

But don’t hold your breath.  The world’s governments are not likely to come up with anything significant.  The G-20 nations, which have been described as the “executive board of the world,” have little interest in bold political and institutional reform.  That would only disrupt the desperate search for economic growth.  An open, candid inquiry into the growth economy, consumerism and the finite carrying capacity of Earth’s biophysical systems would be far too politically explosive.  It is far easier to talk about a “green economy,” as if greater efficiencies alone will save the planet.
Continue reading →