Who Should Pay for the Costs of Climate Change?

TheRealNews

Published on Dec 21, 2014

West Coast Environmental Law Attorney Andrew Gage and EcoEquity Director Tom Athanasiou discuss how corporations and governments can be held accountable

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Fossil Free – Global Divestment Day

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Climate: The Crisis and the Movement

Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist and author of the international bestsellers, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007) and No Logo (2000). Her latest book is This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate (2014). She is a columnist for The Nation magazine and the Guardian newspaper, a contributing editor at Harper’s magazine, and a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute. She serves on the board of directors for 350.org, the global grassroots movement to solve the climate crisis.

December 2014

Wherein lie the roots of the climate crisis? Allen White, Senior Fellow at the Tellus Institute, talks with writer and activist Naomi Klein, author of the new book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate, about how our economic system has driven us to the point of crisis and how we can build a movement to confront the root causes of contemporary planetary perils.

A major theme of your new book is that resistance to the economic transformation required to confront climate change is the paramount challenge facing both the planet and the activist community. Why is that?

According to the analysis of the Carbon Tracker Initiative, between now and 2050, we need to leave at least two-thirds of proven fossil fuel reserves in the ground in order to keep global warming below the widely accepted threshold of two degrees Celsius. If this occurs, owners of these reserves will have to sacrifice trillions of dollars in profits. The fossil fuel companies and their investors, who are counting on these profits, have a huge vested interest in blocking meaningful climate action and, as we have seen so far, the power to do so.

…(read more).

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Toward Resilience: A Guide to Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation

Toward Resilience is an introductory resource for development and humanitarian practitioners working with populations at risk of the impacts of climate change and other hazards. It is aimed at program management and technical staff of development and humanitarian organizations, and seeks to strengthen understanding of the basic approaches and principles that can be applied to disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation initiatives. It also provides practical guidance on how to integrate disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation into the programme management cycle and adapt activities to a range of contexts and development and humanitarian sectors.

• Synopsis
  Toward Resilience is an introductory resource for development and humanitarian practitioners working with populations at risk of disasters and other impacts of climate change. It is aimed at program management, advisory and technical staff of development and humanitarian organizations, and seeks to strengthen staff understanding of the basic approaches and principals that can be applied to disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation initiatives. It also provides practical guidance on how to integrate disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation into the program cycle and adapt activities to a range of contexts and development and humanitarian sectors.This guide includes examples from practitioners’ experiences that illustrate good practice and learning, and suggests tools and resources that practitioners find useful. This book is a core resource developed as part of the Emergency Capacity Building (ECB) project. The ECB Project is a collaborative effort comprised of six agencies: CARE International, Catholic Relief Services, Mercy Corps, Oxfam, Save the Children and World Vision International.
• Table of Contents
  Introduction
  1. Understanding disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation
  2. Key groups for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation
  3. Program cycle management for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation
  4. Key sectors for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation
  5. Key contexts for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation
  6. Creating an enabling environment for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation
  Tools and Resources
  Glossary
  Index

See also:
http://developmentbookshop.com/toward-resilience-pb

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Toward resilience: a guide to disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation

Source(s): Catholic Relief Services (CRS)

• Publisher(s): Practical Action
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN/ISSN: 9781853397868
• Author(s): Turnbull, Marilise; Sterrett, Charlotte L; Hilleboe, Amy
• Number of pages: 180 p.

This guide is an introductory resource for staff of development and humanitarian organizations working with people whose live and rights are threatened by disasters and climate change.The guide provides essential introductory information, principals of effective practice, guidelines for action in a range of sectors and settings, case studies and links to useful tools and resources, for the application of an integrated, rights-based approach to disaster reduction and climate change adaptation. The guide is also a useful resource for other stakeholders, including staff from local, district and national government offices, the United Nations, donors, as well as social and natural scientists.

Each of its six chapters includes case studies from practitioners’ experiences to illustrate examples of program activities, good practices and lessons learned:

Chapter 1: Understanding disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation; Chapter 2: Describes the impacts of disaster and climate change risk on vulnerable populations: people living with disabilities, chronic diseases, older people and indigenous peoples to provide a risk analysis and actions to build resilience; Chapter 3: Explains program cycle management for interventions to reduce disaster and climate change risk. It includes key issues and steps to follow at each stage of the program cycle, and guidance for knowledge generation and management throughout; Chapter 4: Highlights the need to incorporate measures to reduce disaster and climate change risk in the main sectors of developmental and humanitarian intervention: food security; livelihoods; natural resource management; water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH); education; health; and protection; Chapter 5: Explains the value of incorporating measures to reduce disaster and climate change risk in interventions in conflict settings; early recovery; urban environments; and slow-onset disasters; Chapter 6: Describes the importance of governance and advocacy for the creation of an enabling environment for resilience-building. It provides guidance on how to apply the principles for effective interventions in these closely-related areas of work

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Toward Resilience: Principles in practice – New online elearning course now available free at Disaster Ready

• Date:18 Dec 2014
• Source(s):Cornerstone Foundation; Emergency Capacity Building Project (ECB)

The Emergency Capacity Building Project’s Toward Resilience Guide has emerged as the ‘go to’ resource on incorporating disaster risk reduction & climate change adaptation principles into relief and development programming. Toward Resilience: Principles in Practice is a 75 minute e-learning course that helps learners understand how these principles can be put into practice in areas where communities are threatened by hazards and the effects of climate change. Based on three real world case studies, the companion course illustrates the benefits and key elements of an integrated approach to building resilience to disaster and climate change risk. Developed in collaboration with members of the ECB Project and DisasterReady.org, the course is available free online.

Additional information

http://DisasterReady.org

• View brochure [PDF 378.49 KB]
• Toward resilience: a guide to disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation
• Integrating DRR and CCA: eLearning companion course on Toward Resilience – Principles in practice

Keywords

• Themes:Climate Change, Disaster Risk Management
• Short URL:http://preventionweb.net/go/41445

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Tony Benn: the aristocrat who fought for workers

Channel 4 News

Published on Mar 14, 2014
He was a hero to the left — but critics saw him as an extremist who consigned Labour to the electoral wildnerness for years. But today, politicians from all sides have been paying tribute to Tony Benn. .Sign up for Snowmail, your daily preview of what is on Channel 4 News, sent straight to your inbox, here: http://mailing.channel4.com/public/sn…

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Tony Benn – 10 min History Lesson for Neoliberals

MetaReaLizard

Published on Aug 6, 2012
Tony Benn – 10 min History Lesson for Neoliberals

Great stuff man genuine feeling in it!
Homage to Tony Benn rap by Dan Bull: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y76us…

Eulogy Galloway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYPea…

“An MP is the only job where you have 70,000 employers, and only one employee.”

“It’s the same each time with progress. First they ignore you, then they say you’re mad, then dangerous, then there’s a pause and then you can’t find anyone who disagrees with you.”

“The Marxist analysis has got nothing to do with what happened in Stalin’s Russia: it’s like blaming Jesus Christ for the Inquisition in Spain.”

“I’m not frightened about death. I don’t know why, but I just feel that at a certain moment your switch is switched off, and that’s it. And you can’t do anything about it.”

“Making mistakes is part of life. The only things I would feel ashamed of would be if I had said things I hadn’t believed in order to get on. Some politicians do do that.”

“I’ve got four lovely children, ten lovely grandchildren, and I left parliament to devote more time to politics, and I think that what is really going on in Britain is a growing sense of alienation. People don’t feel anyone listens to them.”

“If one meets a powerful person – Rupert Murdoch, perhaps, or Joe Stalin or Hitler – one can ask five questions: what power do you have; where did you get it; in whose interests do you exercise it; to whom are you accountable; and, how can we get rid of you? Anyone who cannot answer the last of those questions does not live in a democratic system.”

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How will climate change transform agriculture?

Date:18 Dec 2014
Source(s):International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)

Climate change impacts will require major but very uncertain transformations of global agriculture systems by mid-century, according to new IIASA research.

Climate change will require major transformations in agricultural systems, including increased irrigation and moving production from one region to another, according to the new study, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters. However without careful planning for uncertain climate impacts, the chances of getting adaptation wrong are high, the study shows.

The new study by IIASA researchers provides a global scenario analysis that covers nine different climate scenarios, 18 crops and 4 crop management systems, as well as the interactions between crop production, consumption, prices, and trade. It specifically examines adaptations that are investment-intensive and not easily reversible, such as building new water management infrastructure for irrigation, or increases and decreases to the production capacity of a region. Such “transformations” the researchers say, need to be anticipated, but their implementation is particularly plagued by uncertainty.

IIASALive  Published on Dec 19, 2014Authors: D. Leclère1, P. Havlík, S. Fuss, E. Schmid, A. Mosnier, B. Walsh, H. Valin, M. Herrero, N. Khabarov, M. Obersteiner  http://www.iiasa.ac.at

“There is a lot of uncertainty in how climate change will impact agriculture, and what adaptations will be needed,” says IIASA Ecosystems Services and Management researcher David Leclère, who led the study. “Our new study is the first to examine at a global scale whether the adaptations required from agricultural systems are in the transformational range, and whether these transformations are robust across plausible scenarios. By looking at where, when, why, and which transformations are required, but also in how many scenarios, it lays the groundwork for countries to better plan for the impacts of climate change.”

In line with earlier results, the study finds that the impacts on crop yields of changes in climate, such as increased temperature, changing precipitation levels, along with the increased CO2 atmospheric concentration (which has a fertilizing effect on plants), could lead to anywhere between an 18% decline in global caloric production from cropland, to as much as a 3% increase by 2050. This biophysical impact varies widely across regions, crops, and management systems, thereby creating opportunities for adaptation at the same time.

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IIASA Research: How will climate change transform agriculture?

IIASALive

Published on Dec 19, 2014

Authors: D. Leclère1, P. Havlík, S. Fuss, E. Schmid, A. Mosnier, B. Walsh, H. Valin, M. Herrero, N. Khabarov, M. Obersteiner

www.iiasa.ac.at

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