The Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) within the Earth Institute at Columbia University has a new report on the human migrations that may occur as a result of climate change. The report says climate change may cause vast human migrations on an order not previously experienced. The report, In Search of Shelter: Mapping the Effects of Climate Change on Displacement and Migration, was written by CIESIN, the United Nations University, and CARE International. See http://www.ciesin.columbia.edu/ to download a copy of the report.

A new report says climate change may cause vast human migrations on an order not previously experienced. The report, In Search of Shelter: Mapping the Effects of Climate Change on Displacement and Migration, was written by researchers at CIESIN, the United Nations University, and CARE International. Drawing on empirical evidence from a new survey of every continent, with original maps created by CIESIN that pinpoint potential locations of critical displacements, the report explores how climate change is already causing people to leave their homes, and details some of the specific ways displacement may occur over the next decades…

For full article, visit:
http://www.ciesin.columbia.edu/documents/clim-migr-report-june09_final.pdf

Thanks to Lester Brown for this article.
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Earth Policy Institute
Plan B 3.0 Book Byte
June 3, 2009

MELTING ICE COULD LEAD TO MASSIVE WAVES OF CLIMATE REFUGEES

Lester R. Brown

As the earth warms, the melting of the earth’s two massive ice sheets–Antarctica and Greenland–could raise sea level enormously. If the Greenland ice sheet were to melt, it would raise sea level 7 meters (23 feet). Melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet would raise sea level 5 meters (16 feet). But even just partial melting of these ice sheets will have a dramatic effect on sea level rise. Senior scientists are noting that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projections of sea level rise during this century of 18 to 59 centimeters are already obsolete and that a rise of 2 meters during this time is within range.

For full article, visit:
http://www.earthpolicy.org/Books/Seg/PB3ch03_ss5.htm

The largest floating glacier in the northern hemisphere is cracking again. Scientists are expecting five billion tons of ice to break away from the Petermann glacier this summer—a piece about the size of Manhattan. In fact, the ice chunk contains enough water to supply New York City for more than two years

A team of independent scientists spent the past two weeks studying the 50-mile long, 10-mile wide “ice tounge” on the northwest coast of Greenland. Aboard the Arctic Sunrise, a Greenpeace ship, they took photographs and footage of the massive glacier.

For full article, visit:
http://www.emagazine.com/view/?4769

Thanks to Glenn Campbell for this article.
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Braking the rise in Earth’s population would be a major help in the fight against global warming, according to an unprecedented U.N. report published Wednesday that draws a link between demographic pressure and climate change.

“Slower population growth … would help build social resilience to climate change’s impacts and would contribute to a reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions in the future,” the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) says.

Its 104-page document emphasises that population policies be driven by support for women, access to family planning, reproductive health, and other voluntary measures.

For full article, visit:
http://www.grist.org/article/2009-11-18

Thanks to Jim Poyser for this article from Inter Press Service.
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Poor women will bear the greatest ‘climate burden’, says the United Nations Population Fund in its 2009 State of the World Population report, released today.

The report emphasizes that climate change is more than an issue of energy efficiency or industrial carbon emissions; it is also an issue of population dynamics, poverty and gender equity.

Poor and vulnerable populations the world over are the ones who will be hardest hit by climate change, despite their comparatively minute contribution to our global carbon footprint – the poorest billion people on Earth contribute a mere three percent of the world’s total carbon footprint.

For full article, visit:
http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=49323

Thanks to Bob Walker for alerting me to the fact that the Wall Street Journal’s international edition today published an opinion piece on page 12 that viciously attacks the UNFPA report on population and climate change. The article is pasted below. It deserves a very strong response. Following the editorial is the letter I sent in response, plus two articles about the UNFPA report. At http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704204304574545323417792430.html?mod=googlenews_wsj#articleTabs%3Darticle, you can see the comments and the replies by WSJ. The UNFPA report can be downloaded from http://www.unfpa.org/swp/2009/en/. Letters are to be sent to: wsj.ltrs@wsj.com.
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Life: It’s Killing the Planet

Forget about saving the environment for the sake of your children. It turns out that if you really care about the planet, you probably shouldn’t have any children to begin with.

That’s the thrust of the 2009 report from the U.N. Population Fund—the people who in 1983 handed China’s then-minister of family planning an award for the “effectiveness” of population control by forced abortion and sterilization. The Fund has long believed that more people are a burden, not a boon, to human welfare. The idea is not new, and over the centuries has taken form in the view that too many people consume too many natural resources, or that more people necessarily means more poverty, or (much more sinisterly) that people prone to having many children are somehow the wrong kind of people.

For full article, visit:
http://online.wsj.com/article

As you may have noticed, I have been saving a collection of articles on climate change issues for a few months. Some of them address the population factor in climate change. I will be distributing these for a few weeks leading up to the Copenhagen conference.

On April 27, the Institute for Policy Integrity (New York University School of Law) released its latest report, The Road Ahead: EPA’s Options and Obligations for Regulating Greenhouse Gases. In a detailed legal analysis, the publication discusses the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) legal obligations and policy options under the Clean Air Act, given the EPA’s finding of April 17, discussed in the article from the EPA’s website below.

For the full report, visit:
http://policyintegrity.org/publications/documents/TheRoadAhead.pdf

PMC has placed Laurie Mazur (editor of A Pivotal Moment) on several radio talk shows in the coming weeks. Below is a list of the interviews and where you can tune in to hear Ms. Mazur.
Continue Reading »

Many thanks to Phil Kreitner for this article from Reuters.
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Rivers in some of the world’s most populated regions are losing water, many because of climate change, researchers reported on Tuesday.

Affected rivers include the Yellow River in northern China, the Ganges in India, the Niger in West Africa, and the Colorado in the southwestern United States.

When added to the effects from damming, irrigation and other water use, these changes could add up to a threat to future supplies of food and water, the researchers reported in the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate.

For full article, visit:
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N21466356.htm

Thanks to Daniel Lerch of the Post Carbon Institute for this article from The Independent.
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The report praises the web, which it singles out as ‘the most powerful force for globalisation, democratisation, economic growth, and education in history.

An effort on the scale of the Apollo mission that sent men to the Moon is needed if humanity is to have a fighting chance of surviving the ravages of climate change. The stakes are high, as, without sustainable growth, “billions of people will be condemned to poverty and much of civilisation will collapse”.

For full article, visit:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change