Coastal Flooding Will Hit World’s Biggest Polluters Hardest

• Ryan GrenobleEditor at The Huffington Post

Three of the world’s heaviest polluters will likely face the greatest human and financial costs caused by coastal flooding, one of the effects of climate change.

According to a report released Monday by Christian Aid, an anti-poverty organization, people living in the U.S., China and India — three of the world’s very worst offenders in terms of greenhouse gas emission — face the greatest risks posed by coastal flooding.

By 2060, more than a billion people worldwide will likely confront coastal flooding due to sea level rise, storm surges and extreme weather, with the majority of those people living in major cities throughout Asia.

Calcutta, India, tops the list, where around 1.3 million people are currently exposed to coastal flooding. By 2070, that number is expected to balloon to 14 million, according to the report. Mumbai ranks second, where an estimated 11.4 million people could face disruption due to flooding by 2070. Dhaka, Bangladesh, is third with a projected 11.1 million vulnerable people.

CHRISTIAN AID

The world’s top 20 cities ranked in terms of population exposed to coastal flooding in 2010 and 2070. The rising numbers reflect socioeconomic factors driving populations to the coasts, as well as increased coastal flooding risks due to climate change.

The poorest residents in these areas are likely to be hit hardest, as they would be ill-suited to respond to extreme climate events and would have the most difficult time rebuilding their lives afterward.

“Cruelly, it will be the poor that will suffer the most. Although the financial cost to cities in rich countries will be crippling, wealthier people will at least have options to relocate and receive insurance protection,” Dr Alison Doig, one of the authors of the report, said in a release accompanying the study. “Evidence shows that from New Orleans to Dhaka, it is the poorest who are most vulnerable because they have the worst infrastructure and no social or financial safety nets to help them recover.”

That includes people like Adan Morales Saracay, a 59-year-old fisherman in El Salvador whose family nearly died last year amid a series of wave surges created by a storm at sea.

We were in panic for the love of our families, we didn’t want to lose anyone. So we decided to abandon everything, but it was very scary.Adan Saracay, a Salvadoran fisherman who lost his house in a wave surge.

“It was a Saturday around 2pm. We saw that the waves started getting much larger. Within minutes they came into our houses. By the time the night came, we had to evacuate our entire families. The waves were about 13-14 meters [42 - 46 feet] high,” Saracay recalled to the authors of the report. “We were in panic for the love of our families, we didn’t want to lose anyone. So we decided to abandon everything, but it was very scary.”

“Never in my life have I seen any waves like this before,” he went on. “For the past ten years, the weather has been less predictable. We don’t have anywhere to go.”

After the disaster, Saracay’s house was buried in sand and debris, and the fish he relies on for his livelihood were harder to catch, having fled to deeper water amid the surge.

In addition to the human toll, the report predicts that flooding will exact a large financial cost on coastal cities as well.

In financial terms, Miami is the city that stands to lose the most as oceans rise — not just in the U.S. but in the world. The Florida city is projected to have some $3.5 trillion in assets exposed to coastal flooding by 2070. According to the report, the second most at-risk city in 2070 will be Guangzhou, China, with $3.4 trillion liable; the New York City/Newark, New Jersey area comes in third on the list with a projected $2.1 trillion.

CHRISTIAN AID

The top 20 cities ranked in terms of assets at risk to coastal flooding, both in 2010 and 2070.

To combat these massive human and financial costs, Doig and her co-authors argue strongly in favor of taking action now to lessen pain in the future.

“There is a chance this horrifying vision of the future can be avoided,” Doig, a HuffPost contributor, noted in the release. “It is striking that the cities facing the most severe impacts are in countries with high contributions of carbon emissions. The first thing we can do is speed up the global transition away from dirty fossil fuels to the clean, renewably [sic] energy of the future.”

“We can also do more to prepare for such occurrences,” she added. “Spending money now on reducing the risk of disasters will save money and lives later. Such investment is a no brainer.”

STRINGER . / REUTERS

Flooding at Alton Road and 10th Street is seen in Miami Beach, Florida on November 5, 2013.

Last March, in an address following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon noted that the cost savings of preparing for catastrophes ahead of time — and perhaps even preventing them — are significant.

“We cannot prevent natural disasters,” he said. “But at least we can prepare ourselves how to minimize disaster risk. We can reduce disaster risk.”

According to Ban, every dollar spent planning for and reducing risk ahead of time reduces the cost spent cleaning up after a disaster by around $7. 

“Resilient recovery means protecting societies against the worst damage from future disasters,” he said. “The money spent is not a cost — it is a valuable investment. Humanitarian needs are rising around the world. Climate change is increasing the risks. Disaster risk reduction is a frontline against climate change.”

From 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/biggest-polluters-climate-change-flooding_us_573a007ee4b08f96c183b311

Let's get serious about impacts

Okay, So I've been reviewing the Working Group II Contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - Summary for Policy Makers.

It's riveting. If you like this sort of thing. Which I actually do.

But here is their summary of anticipated impacts of climate change. This is a summary of their summary. As I read through the full report, I'll have more to say, especially as it relates to adaptation solutions. The impacts - that we need to adapt to break down like this:

• Decline in freshwater resources: Less freshwater available over all and increase competition among sectors (energy, agriculture, municipal water use, industry, etc.). This has wide ranging impacts we will spend more time with soon. It's a BIG one.
• Terrestrial (land) and freshwater ecosystem damages: extinction, pollutions, invasive species (think kudzu if you live in the southeast US, or zebra mussels if you live near the Great Lakes). This also will lead to irreversible damage to ecosystems, which leads to decrease in carbon storage, decrease in wood production, decline in water quality, loss of additional biodiversity, and damage to ecosystems.
• Sea level rise impacting coastal and low lying areas: includes flooding, storm surges, erosion, and submergence. (Not so good for Miami, New York, LA, London, the Netherlands, the Caribbean, etc. - also not great for communities that will be flooded with the people fleeing these areas.) 
• Marine ecosystems: decline in biodiversity, increase in extinctions, decline in fisheries, including commercial fish catches (Seriously bad news for coastal communities with big fishing dependencies, especially those which have already decimated the estuaries - which most have). 
• Ocean acidification: loss of coral reefs, disruption of the food web (including plankton), increase damage to polar ecosystems, and serious disruption to commercial fisheries. 
• Decline in food security and food production systems: we already are seeing a decline in grain yields, and it is forecast to drop very quickly in the next 25 years. This has some bad ramifications as food prices increase, and food becomes more difficult to grow.
• Food access and prices will become destabilized: as grain production drops and commercial fisheries collapse, (remember grain is fed to livestock as well as humans) access to food sources will become increasingly problematic. People will be hungry.
• Urban areas become increasingly stressed: by heat waves, extreme precipitation - rains, snow, ice, flooding, land slides, air pollution, drought and lack of clean waters, plus an increase strain on infrastructure, and large populations migrating into urban areas due to economic and environmental dislocation.
• Rural areas also stressed: by heat, decline in soil fertility and productivity, difficulties accessing clean safe water and food resources.
• Economic disruptions: while energy needs for heat may decrease over all, energy demand for cooling will increase, and basic infrastructure to support economic activities - such as transportation of people and food - are likely to be deteriorating and threatened - especially by sea level rise and loss of port services.
• Human health will be jeopardized: due to increase in disease vectors such as mosquitoes (think Zika), loss of nutrients from food and less access to clean safe water, and increase in vulnerable populations who are economically marginalized by climate change impacts.
• Human security will decline: meaning we will see increased large scale migrations of human populations, which will put stresses on already stressed communities as resources like food and fresh water grow increasingly scarce.
• Increased violence due to in-group/out-group dynamics: with displaced people migrating and being seen as threatening resource availability.
• Increased civil unrest: due to increase poverty, increased uncertainty, and economic dislocation with greater expectation of state/government responsiveness.
• Negative impacts on territorial integrity and infrastructure: as more demand is placed on access to shared resources, repairs to infrastructure and basic state functions will be increasingly stressed.

And all this results in:

Decreased economic growth, increase poverty, decreased food security, increased number of "poverty traps" and "hunger hotspots".

AND there is no mention of the increasing human populations in the timeframe they are looking at!!

In other words, we are in a bad way people. It won't get better and it won't go away. We have to deal with it, and we have to do it - TOGETHER!

A critical concluding remark of the summary states that:

"Underestimating the complexity of adaptation as a social process can create unrealistic expectations about achieving intended adaptation outcomes." p. 29. This will only exacerbate the negative impacts and increase pending civil unrest. 

It's time for us to address the complexity of adaptation as a social process. And get on with it.



For more details please see:

IPCC, 2014: Summary for policymakers. In: Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability.

Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Field, C.B., V.R. Barros, D.J. Dokken, K.J. Mach, M.D. Mastrandrea, T.E. Bilir, M. Chatterjee, K.L. Ebi, Y.O. Estrada, R.C. Genova, B. Girma, E.S. Kissel, A.N. Levy, S. MacCracken,P.R. Mastrandrea, and L.L. White (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, pp. 1-32.

Sea Level Rise - even if we slow rising temperatures... GRAPHIC

Back Bay, Boston—Before

Back Bay, Boston—After

AT&T Park, San Francisco—Before

AT&T Park, San Francisco—After

(Images: Courtesy Climate Central)

Washington Monument, Washington, D.C.—Before

Washington Monument, Washington, D.C.—After

And this is IF we seriously slow warming temperatures...

So where are all the people living along these coasts going to go? The infrastructure will be under water, no power, no heat, water and sewage systems backed up, lots of mosquitoes. Likely residents will not be staying there. 

see more at:

http://www.takepart.com/photos/10-images-show-what-coastal-cities-will-look-after-sea-levels-rise/washington-monument-washington-dc-after?cmpid=ait-fb

 

#1 Preparing your Go Bag - Part 1

The idea behind a "go bag" is to have a bag of personal items that you want to take with you in the event that you need to leave your home in an emergency situation. The military has these, also known as bug out bags. But essentially if you had to leave your home in a matter of moments, what do you need to be able to survive?

First, why would you need to leave your home and what does that have to do with climate change adaptation?

Good question. The impacts of climate change can be disasters that strike suddenly and with little warning. This can include: floods, forest fires, sudden power outages due to storms, infrastructure collapse (more on that to come), sudden contagious illnesses, civil unrest,  Donald Trump actually becoming president. The list goes on. The point is, you need to be prepared to go quickly and it's reassuring knowing you have a "go bag" ready.

So what goes in your "go bag"?

If you google "go bag", you will find a lot of recommendations, some from natural disaster preparedness sites, some from government agencies, some from "preppers"/survivalists, some from people planning to go sight seeing. 

For now, let's assume we are looking at the first two categories. The survivalist go bag is a good idea, depending on the threat level. We can always upscale as needed. The sight seeing go bag is great for sight seeing tourist, but those won't be enough, likely.

For each family member you should pack an individual bag for each person to carry. Assume you may get separated so don't leave everything with one person.

Some key things you need to have in your go bag:

• Copies of your important documents (health, home, care, and life insurance caazrds, house deed, photo IDs, passport, bank information, cell phone number, photo, and descriptions of each family member, including pets, physician contact information, family contact information, list of family member medications, general medical records and vaccination records for all family members) in a waterproof container. This can be a ziplock bag inside another ziplock bag. Do not assume having all these in your email or on your phone will work. You may need hard copies. Go ahead and do that now.
• Cash - up to about $300 in small bills, more or less. Have it in the local currency if you live abroad, or travel abroad. You may want to have more cash on hand, but for the "go bag" this should be enough. (Kids could have less money in their bags, but should have some cash. The amount should be based on age and responsibility.)
• A first aid kit with medicines you (and family members including pets) MUST take regularly. Include pain medicine, both aspirin/NSAIDs and tylenol. Multivitamins and supplements may be nice to have on hand, but in an emergency, you don't want to carry too much. You may want some pro-bitotics if your stomach is sensitive. Also, if you have anyone in the family with serious allergies, please keep an up-to-date epi-pen in your "go bag". 
• Phone charger, including cords, and hand crank or solar powered charger unit, ideally with a radio function.
• A flashlight - high efficiency if possible. 
• Granola bars/power bars/etc. each person should have at least 5-6
• Water bottle - sterilized, full, and refillable. Make the bottle durable - metal or nalgene are good.
• Dry dog/cat food for your pets - depends on size of the animal but enough for 2-3 days, in a sealed ziplock bag. 
• Collapsable water bowl 
• A full change of comfortable clothes, including socks and underwear - focus on durable, and comfortable first. Fashion doesn't matter much in an apocalypse.
• A towel - because the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is right - always take a towel. You can use it for a blanket, a towel, a ground cloth, etc. It doesn't have to be a big fluffy towel - but something with a little heft.
• A plastic poncho to use as a tarp, rain protection, ground cover etc.
• Strong nylon rope - at least 20 feet to use for everything and anything.
• Bungee cords - again 2-3 are useful for everything. 
• A bandana - because you can use them for EVERYTHING also. And they look really cool.
• A can opener - because you may need one. Please, only hand held. NOT electric.
• A full cigarette lighter - because you may want to light something on fire, plus if you cut the nylon rope, it will fray if you don't burn the ends to seal it.
• A swiss army knife - this should be obvious. No really. Please do not ask me to explain this... Unless you really need me to. 
• A deck of cards - because you will get bored at some point. 
• What else? Seriously, please add your suggestions.

No two bags are exactly the same, but:

Just a note on what sort of "go bag" you should use. 

This is good:

This, not so much. Don't be stupid. No one could outrun zombies or hike for 5 miles in this. No. Just  No. 

I don't care how good you look in heels, and love your rolling carry on-bag, we are talking disaster preparedness, not a trip to New York City. No one else should have to carry your bag over ground it won't role over and those shoes...? Lovely, but not practical in an emergency, or for long hikes over uneven ground.

Okay, now to be honest, I do not have a "go bag" prepared for myself, as of 3 February 2016. But, I promise I will do it, and let you know how long it takes.

Do you have one? 

What's in it? Or what will be?

Housing for the masses?

This is something that I want to come back to soon, but as we face the specter of climate change we will be facing some serious challenges of housing lots of people.

It goes like this:

• Most major cities are in areas very close to coasts. 
• Sea level rise, due to global warming, thermal expansion, and storm surge, as well as ground water inundation is going to make living close to the seas and oceans more difficult. 
• Other people who live in arid areas will find there is not enough water available to sustain them and will need to move. 

These simple facts will result in mass portions of the population on this planet moving away from where they have lived for hundreds of generations to safer, more secure places. 

We see the problems  across the Middle East and in Europe with this with Syrian refugees today fleeing the horrors of their homeland. In Kenya, in Haiti, in refugee camps around the world, thousands of families are barely managing to survive the elements under plastic tarps, with no insulation or protection. The structures that are built are designed to be temporary. 

But when Miami is under water, when New Orleans has slipped into the Gulf of Mexico, or when London is awash in waters over people's heads, where are all those humans, those families going to go?

The horrors will be different from Syria today, but the same questions remain:

How do we house people? 
How to we make sure they are safe and even improve the environment of the area? 
And do we quickly build homes are more than "temporary"?

A friend of mine in Sierra Leone shared this with me on Facebook. 
I'm not sure it's THE solution, but it could be a start.

http://www.boredpanda.com/hobbit-holes-eco-friendly-houses-green-magic-homes/

I'm a huge fan of sustainable, low cost "green" building. I'll spend more time on this issue in the near future, but for now, we all need to start thinking about solutions to the challenges we will be facing. 

For more information on these structures, visit: http://www.greenmagichomes.com/main.php

(yes, I know, these would need to be mass produced, low cost, made from sustainable materials, have appropriate zoning, and infrastructure design and support, etc. - but it is a start, and that's what we need to start working on now. Plus hey, build one of these in your yard and you know your neighbors will all be super impressed - and building social capital is very important too.)


And if you want to learn a bit about my own green building project check out the blog I wrote about 8 years ago, as I was building my own environmentally friendly office space: 
http://greened-house.blogspot.com