Michael Meacher - Labour's Future

More intense storms and consequent floods, landslides, and tropical cyclones will become more frequent. Higher temperatures will cause sea water to expand and some ice cover, including most mountain glaciers and parts of the Greenland ice sheet, to melt. Rising sea levels will threaten many of the world’s most populated cities such as New York, London, Shanghai, Jakarta, Bangkok, Bombay, Manila and Buenos Aires. They would also threaten river delta areas, home to more than 1 billion people. And even a mere one-metre rise in sea-level would devastate as much as 30% of the world’s total cropland.

Higher temperatures and severe heat-waves will increase deaths from heat-stroke, particularly among the elderly and urban poor (as already happened in France and Britain 2 years ago). Hotter climates will cause many disease-carrying insects, most obviously the malarial mosquito, to multiply because they thrive in warm conditions. A recent report from the London School of Hygiene calculated that of ten of the world’s most dangerous vector-borne diseases – malaria, schistosomiasis, dengue fever, lymphatic filariasis, sleeping sickness, Guinea worm, leishmaniasis, river blindness, Chagas’ disease and yellow fever – all but one will increase and extend their range.

Global eco-systems are already threatened and will become more so. Given only a slight warming of tropical waters, coral reefs, which harbour two-thirds of marine fish species and which provide the very foundations of many nations’ diet, face disaster. The vegetation of a third of the world’s forests is expected to undergo major changes. By 2050, tropical forests are predicted to die back in many regions, most notably in the Amazon Basin. Similar trends will increase the occurrence of massive wildfires threatening several of the world’s temperate and coniferous forests.

All these processes are already well in hand. But by far the greatest danger for the future is the potential for sudden climate flips, where steady warming suddenly creates a tipping point where massive change abruptly occurs. There are several such possible triggers. One is the thawing of the Arctic permafrost, which could release a seventh of all the carbon stored in the world’s soils. Another is the release of the methane hydrates on the ocean bed which are thought to contain 10,000 billion tons of carbon, making them one of the largest reservoirs of fossil fuels in the world. A third is the risk to the Gulf Stream which provides northern Europe with its mild climate. The higher temperatures rise, the greater the risk that the Gulf Stream will shut down, which would make the northern European winter climate comparable to Siberia. If the thermohaline circulation which supports our present climate did in fact close down, as it could well do later this century, it would be impossible to feed and sustain current population levels.

The effects on human societies, even without these runaway feedback effects, will be drastic. The Red Cross estimates that a million people have been killed by extreme disasters such as droughts, cyclones and floods over the last decade. Hundreds of millions more will in future be displaced by drought, crop failure, flooding and sea-level rise, and become environmental refugees – perhaps six times or more than today. Scientists from Southampton University recently estimated that climate change will lead to an additional 170 million people living in severely water-stressed areas by 2050, with very serious consequences for human health and survival.

Three sectors within the global economy will be particularly devastated as climate change steadily progresses. Tourist activity around beaches and resorts will be hard hit by rising sea-levels, fresh water shortages, salt water intrusion, increased storms, unbearable summer heat, and the arrival of new deadly diseases such as malaria and even by locust swarms. Commercial forestry will be severely affected by increased forest fires, and commercial fisheries by increasing acidification of the oceans. But the industry with the most to lose from climate change is insurance. A couple of massive storms in the wrong place – for example major cities on the US mainland – could wipe out the world reinsurance pool of $200-300bn, and because insurance companies are major investors in corporate stocks worldwide, the effects on the global economy could be devastating.