[TheClimate.Vote] January 24, 2018 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/January 24, 2018/

[Davos, Switzerland]
*Climate change, AI and harassment - the hottest topics at this year's 
Davos 
<https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jan/20/davos-2018-wef-hottest-topics-climate-change-harassment-donald-trump>*
The World Economic Forum focuses on the 'fractured world' this year: but 
the biggest star at the gala will be Donald Trump...
Trump moved quickly to pull the US out of the Paris climate accords in 
one of his first acts as president last year. At Davos, where the 
environment is always among the most important issues up for debate, 
this won't have gone down well.
The former US vice-president Al Gore is attending and will speak on 
several panels, including one about how extreme weather events are 
proving more devastating and expensive.
The WEF's global risks perception survey 
<https://weforum.ent.box.com/s/v47o1sar82njqzby9w2nxrnpedp977nf>, 
released last week, cited climate change-related issues as the top 
problems facing the world, while it also issued a thinly veiled warning 
to the US president that "nation-state unilateralism" will make it 
harder to combat change and ecological damage...
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jan/20/davos-2018-wef-hottest-topics-climate-change-harassment-donald-trump
-
[Survey]
*The Global Risks Report 2018, 13th Edition, is published by the World 
Economic Forum. 
<https://weforum.ent.box.com/s/v47o1sar82njqzby9w2nxrnpedp977nf>*
Global Risk Report summary clips:

    In Risk Reassessment, selected risk experts share their insights
    about the implications for decision-makers in businesses,
    governments and civil society of developments in our understanding
    of risk. In this year's report, Roland Kupers writes about fostering
    resilience in complex systems, while Michele Wucker calls for
    organizations to pay more attention to cognitive bias in their risk
    management processes...

    Among the most pressing environmental challenges facing us are
    extreme weather events and temperatures;
    accelerating biodiversity loss; pollution of air, soil and water;
    failures of climate-change mitigation and adaptation; and transition
    risks as we move to a low-carbon
    future. However, the truly systemic challenge here rests in the
    depth of the interconnectedness that exists
    both among these environmental risks and between them and risks in
    other categories - such as water
    crises and involuntary migration. And as the impact of Hurricane
    Maria on Puerto Rico has starkly illustrated,
    environmental risks can also lead to serious disruption of critical
    infrastructure...

    *Our growing vulnerability to systemic risks*
    Humanity has become remarkably adept at understanding how to
    mitigate countless conventional risks
    that can be relatively easily isolated and managed with standard
    risk management
    approaches. But we are much less competent when it comes to dealing
    with complex risks
    in systems characterized by feedback loops, tipping points and
    opaque cause-and-effect relationships that
    can make intervention problematic...

    Think of the tensions between our creaking global institutional
    framework and the pace of change
    in the 21st century. Think even of the ethical value systems that
    shape behaviour within and between
    countries, and the unpredictability that can result when there is a
    reevaluation of what is acceptable and
    unacceptable.

    When a risk cascades through a complex system, the danger is not of
    incremental damage but of "runaway
    collapse" - or, alternatively, a transition to a new, suboptimal
    status quo that becomes difficult to escape.
    For example, even though a runaway collapse of the global financial
    system
    was averted a decade ago, the global financial crisis triggered
    numerous economic, societal, political and
    geopolitical disruptions. Many are still only poorly understood, but
    they shape a "new normal" that in turn will
    create its own disruptions, spillovers and feedback loops in the
    months and years ahead.

    As the pace of change accelerates, signs of strain are evident in
    many of the systems on which we rely. We
    cannot discount the possibility that one or more of these systems
    will collapse. Just as a piece of elastic
    can lose its capacity to snap back to its original shape, repeated
    stress can lead systems - organizations,
    economies, societies, the environment - to lose their capacity to
    rebound. If we exhaust our capacities
    to absorb disruption and allow our systems to become brittle enough
    to break, it is difficult to overstate the
    damage that might result...

    The results of the GRPS (Global Risks Perception Survey
    <https://weforum.ent.box.com/s/v47o1sar82njqzby9w2nxrnpedp977nf>)
    are pessimistic in this regard: the
    overwhelming majority of respondents expect the risks of interstate
    military conflict or incursion
    to increase in 2018. New technologies add a layer of economic
    vulnerability to geopolitical disruptions,
    with emerging risks of asymmetric economic warfare including
    potential cyberattacks designed
    to disrupt critical financial infrastructure...

    It is striking how sanguine financial markets have remained while
    political and geopolitical
    risk has jumped in recent years. Given current market dynamics, it
    may not be rational for
    any single market participant to price in rising political and
    geopolitical tensions.
    The risk is that we will hit a tipping point at which point everyone
    prices in these tensions,
    with a rush to the exits that hits asset prices, strains the
    resilience of the global financial system
    and tests whether policymakers retain the firepower to prevent deep
    and long-lasting
    impacts on the real economy.

https://weforum.ent.box.com/s/v47o1sar82njqzby9w2nxrnpedp977nf


[NYTime$]
*Fighting Climate Change? We're Not Even Landing a Punch 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/23/business/economy/fighting-climate-change.html>*
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/23/business/economy/fighting-climate-change.html


[poll]
*British children more worried about Trump than global warming and 
nuclear war, study suggests 
<http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/trump-nuclear-war-global-warming-uk-children-fears-mental-health-foundation-a8174996.html>*
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/trump-nuclear-war-global-warming-uk-children-fears-mental-health-foundation-a8174996.html


[survey]*
**Survey: Mayors view climate change as pressing urban issue 
<http://www.wcvb.com/article/survey-mayors-view-climate-change-as-pressing-urban-issue/15851661?src=app>*
U.S. mayors increasingly view climate change as a pressing urban issue, 
so much so that many advocate policies that could inconvenience 
residents or even hurt their cities financially.
In all, 115 mayors of cities with at least 75,000 residents answered the 
fourth annual survey ...
Organizers of the survey declined to release a list of the 115 mayors 
who responded, citing confidentially agreements. According to the 
report, nearly two-thirds of the mayors were Democrats and the cities 
had an average population of 233,000...
"At a time when the national conversation is divisive, cities offer a 
sense of hope and shared identity," the mayors said.
Sixty-eight percent of mayors said they would be willing to expend 
additional resources or sacrifice revenue to combat climate change...
The survey found that attitudes about climate change differed 
geographically as well as politically. For example, 90 percent of all 
Eastern mayors and 97 percent from the Midwest blamed human activities 
for climate change, compared to 70 percent from Southern cities.
http://www.wcvb.com/article/survey-mayors-view-climate-change-as-pressing-urban-issue/15851661?src=app


[Concern]
*Does Threat of Climate Change Affect Mental Health 
<https://psychcentral.com/news/2018/01/19/does-threat-of-climate-change-affect-mental-health/131436.html>*
By Rick Nauert PhD
Many people believe climate change is the driving force behind extreme 
weather events, be it unprecedented flooding, wildfires, or hurricanes. 
Historically, the threat of being directly impacted by these events has 
been small but times may have changed as reports of such incidents 
continue to rise.
In a new study, researchers at the University of Arizona (UA)... 
discovered that while some people have little anxiety about the Earth's 
changing climate, others are experiencing high levels of stress, and 
even depression.
In the study, UA researcher Sabrina Helm, an associate professor of 
family and consumer science found that psychological responses to 
climate change seem to vary based on what type of concern people show 
for the environment. Individuals displaying the most concern about the 
planet's animals and plants were also experiencing the most stress.
The researchers outline three distinct types of environmental concern:

    *Egoistic concern* is concern about how what's happening in the
    environment directly impacts the individual; for example, .. worry
    about how air pollution will affect their own lungs and breathing.
    *Altruistic concern* refers to concern for humanity in general,
    including future generations.
    *Biospheric concern* refers to concern for nature, plants, and animals.

The findings appear in the journal Global Environmental Change.
An online survey of 342 parents of young children, found that those who 
reported high levels of biospheric concern also reported feeling the 
most stressed about global climate change.
However, among those whose concerns were more egoistic or altruistic 
reports of significant stress related to the phenomenon were absent.
In addition, those with high levels of biospheric concern were most 
likely to report signs of depression, while no link to depression was 
found for the other two groups.
"People who worry about animals and nature tend to have a more planetary 
outlook and think of bigger picture issues," Helm said.
"For them, the global phenomenon of climate change very clearly affects 
these bigger picture environmental things, so they have the most 
pronounced worry, because they already see it everywhere.
"We already talk about extinction of species and know it's happening. 
For people who are predominantly altruistically concerned or 
egoistically concerned about their own health, or maybe their own 
financial future, climate change does not hit home yet."
Those with high levels of biospheric concern also were most likely to 
engage in pro-environmental day-to-day behaviors. These activities may 
include recycling or energy savings measures.
Moreover, these individuals were the most likely to engage in coping 
mechanisms to deal with environmental stress. Strategies utilized ranged 
from denying one's individual role in climate change to seeking more 
information on the issue and how to help mitigate it.
Although not generally stressed about climate change, those with high 
levels of altruistic concern, or concern for the well-being of others, 
also engaged in some environmental coping strategies and 
pro-environmental behaviors - more so than those whose environmental 
concerns were mostly egoistic.

    "Climate change is a persistent global stressor, but the
    consequences of it appear to be slowly evolving; they're fairly
    certain to happen - we know that, now - but the impact on
    individuals seems to be growing really slowly and needs to be taken
    very seriously," ..

The research, Helm said, has important public health implications.
"Climate change has evident physical and mental health effects if you 
look at certain outcomes, such as the hurricanes we had last year, but 
we also need to pay very close attention to the mental health of people 
in everyday life, as we can see this, potentially, as a creeping 
development," Helm said.
"Understanding that there are differences in how people are motivated is 
very important for finding ways to address this, whether in the form of 
intervention or prevention."
Source: University of Arizona
https://psychcentral.com/news/2018/01/19/does-threat-of-climate-change-affect-mental-health/131436.html


[international climate negotiations]
*COP23 - Fiji/Bonn - Progress in two zones 
<http://climatefocus.com/publications/cop23-fijibonn-progress-two-zones>*
Client Brief summarizing the main outcomes 
<http://climatefocus.com/publications/cop23-fijibonn-progress-two-zones> 
of COP-23. We found a striking difference in the atmosphere of the two 
zones, where the buzz outside of the negotiation halls was certainly 
more stimulating than the procedural and often tedious progress towards 
the Paris rulebook.
  Nevertheless, we feel cautiously optimistic towards adoption of the 
rulebook later this year and think that COP23 partially delivered on the 
expectations. With an extra negotiation session already being considered 
for 2018, it is however also clear that the implementation of the Paris 
Agreement still remains a major challenge. We hope that you find our 
summary informative and look forward to your reactions.
http://climatefocus.com/publications/cop23-fijibonn-progress-two-zones
Climate Focus <http://climatefocus.com/>
Climate Focus is a pioneering international advisory company and think 
tank that provides advice to governments and multilateral organizations, 
non-governmental and philanthropic organizations, and the private 
sector. We support our clients with shaping and navigating through 
international and domestic climate policies, accessing climate finance, 
and engaging with new climate mechanisms and cooperative approaches.
http://climatefocus.com/


[Asian Palm Oil Consumption]
*DESTROYING THE WORLD TO SAVE IT 
<https://www.regnskog.no/en/news/the-impact-of-expanding-palm-oil-use-in-biofuels>*
Rainforest Foundation Norway and Cerulogy today launched a report, 
'Driving deforestation', looking at the impact of expanding palm oil use 
due to biofuel policies around the world
If the world's major biofuel consumers meet their current targets, they 
will generate unprecedented demand for palm oil, devastating Southeast 
Asia's rainforests in the process.
The report goes directly into the heated debate in Europe and the rest 
of the world about the use of palm oil for biofuels. It analyses biofuel 
policies in key markets including the EU, the US, China, Indonesia and 
the aviation industry. If the world's major biofuel consumers meet their 
current ambitions, they will generate unprecedented demand for palm oil, 
devastating Southeast Asia's rainforests in the process.
  Some key findings from the report:
Currently, biofuel policy results in 10.7 million tonnes of palm oil 
demand, just under a fifth of global production.
The scenario in the report for high 2030 palm oil consumption due to 
biofuel policy would result in:

    - 67 million tonnes palm oil demand due to biofuel policy.
    - 4.5 million hectares deforestation – of which 2.9 million hectares
    peat loss.
    - 7 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions over 20 years, more than total
    annual U.S. GHG emissions.

The consequences this would have for the Southeast Asia's remaining 
rainforests can hardly be overstated.
See more, incl a link to the report, at our website:
https://www.regnskog.no/en/news/the-impact-of-expanding-palm-oil-use-in-biofuels


[Imagination contest]
*Help Us Design a Climate Change Monster 
<https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/design-climate-change-monster>*
OUR FEAR OF THE BOMB created Godzilla. Now, climate change is bringing 
us closer to doomsday. Our changing world will doubtless inspire 
fictional monsters - but what will they look like?
When I imagine a monster brought about by climate change, I think about 
what happens when ecosystems are allowed to run rampant. As I'm afraid 
of deep water, and the things that live there, my climate change monster 
probably lives in the sea. It's huge and primordial - a kind of 
reptilian, shark thing, brought to the ocean's surface by fish die-off 
deep, deep underwater, where it ordinarily lives. (Perhaps it's been 
lured upwards by an incredible buffet of jellyfish, whose population 
have exploded due to rising ocean temperatures.) And heck, with the 
threat of nuclear warfare hanging over us like a dust cloud, let's give 
it a post-nuclear kick - it's got two tails, and far more eyes than 
anything really needs.
We want to imagine some other Atlas Obscura climate change monsters, and 
we need your help. Where will the climate monster come from? Where does 
it live? What will it do? Use your imagination (we'd love inspiration 
from any children who might want to join in) and *send all ideas to 
natasha.frost at atlasobscura.com by Thursday, January 25, 2018. We'll 
illustrate some of our favorites.*
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/design-climate-change-monster


*This Day in Climate History January 24, 2012 
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FB9OUcPENL0>  -  from D.R. Tucker*
In his State of the Union address, President Obama declares, "The 
differences in this chamber may be too deep right now to pass a 
comprehensive plan to fight climate change.  But there's no reason why 
Congress shouldn't at least set a clean energy standard that creates a 
market for innovation."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FB9OUcPENL0


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