Environment

UN report on global warming warns of "climate apartheid" between rich and poor

A new UN report warns of a climate apartheid scenario, where the rich pay to escape the worst effects of climate change
A new UN report warns of a climate apartheid scenario, where the rich pay to escape the worst effects of climate change

The UN has published a new report detailing the dangers of climate change, with a particular focus on how it will shape the issue of poverty in the coming decades. It paints a grim picture for not just those suffering in the current day, but the millions upon millions that will be pushed into poverty as a result of a changing climate, which also has the potential to upend democracy and human rights.

The new report echoes the sentiments of past climate reports published by the UN, calling on governments to do more than the steps laid out in the Paris Agreement in order to limit warming to levels considered safe. These have highlighted the issues of climate refugees, diminishing natural resources and extreme weather events, but the latest puts the spotlight on inequality between rich and poor, and how global warming threatens to widen the divide.

"Even if current targets are met, tens of millions will be impoverished, leading to widespread displacement and hunger," said the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights and report author Philip Alston. "Climate change threatens to undo the last 50 years of progress in development, global health, and poverty reduction. It could push more than 120 million more people into poverty by 2030 and will have the most severe impact in poor countries, regions, and the places poor people live and work."

The report leans on figures from the World Bank and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change among others, and in part imagines a world a few decades down the track with 2° C (3.6° F) of warming above pre-industrial levels. It says this could see 100 to 400 million more people at risk of hunger and 1 to 2 billion without access to adequate water. Crop yields could drop by 30 percent by 2080, while malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea, and heat stress could cause an additional 250,000 deaths per year by 2030.

It also points out the discrepancies in carbon emissions coming from the poor, who will suffer the most, and the wealthy, who will suffer less. The 3.5 billion people making up the poorer half of the world's population are responsible for only 10 percent of these emissions, while the wealthiest 10 percent contribute half. Strikingly, a person in the richest one percent is responsible for 175 times more carbon emissions than somebody in the bottom 10 percent.

"Perversely, while people in poverty are responsible for just a fraction of global emissions, they will bear the brunt of climate change, and have the least capacity to protect themselves," Alston said. "We risk a 'climate apartheid' scenario where the wealthy pay to escape overheating, hunger, and conflict while the rest of the world is left to suffer."

Equally important as the issues of food security, housing and water, the report says, is the threat to democracy and the rule of law. It says the anticipated mass migrations of people forced to either starve or move will "pose immense and unprecedented challenges to governance" and likely stimulate "nationalist, xenophobic, racist and other responses."

"In such a setting, civil and political rights will be highly vulnerable," Alston said. "Most human rights bodies have barely begun to grapple with what climate change portends for human rights, and it remains one on a long laundry list of 'issues', despite the extraordinarily short time to avoid catastrophic consequences. As a full-blown crisis that threatens the human rights of vast numbers of people bears down, the usual piecemeal, issue-by-issue human rights methodology is woefully insufficient."

Source: UN

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14 comments
nono
Escape.. for a few years. Then everyone will be affected by it. Especially when megaton methane explosions will start in the arctic burning most oxigen in atmosphere (like it already happened 150 million years ago and mostly nothing survived). Or when oceans then turned anoxyc and started spilling out hydrogen sulphide clouds
piperTom
The UN (bless their hearts) has ANOTHER alarming report; it's bad, bad, bad! This is based on... well, some rough guesses and lots of emotion. How long since the previous bad-bad-bad "report"? A day? A week? But THIS one has something extra! It points a finger of BLAME at people we already don't like! So... maybe now is a good time for some scientific inquiry: is alarmism habit forming? And then, what are the withdrawal symptoms?
Bill S.
Ah yes, the U.N., a completely unbiased and completely useless entity that creates nothing, other than distain for the United States and any other country that doesn't goose step in line with their ideology of how things should be in a globalist economy.
Ran Xerox
When you look back hundreds of thousands of years at global temps per ice cores you see that there is nothing extraordinary about our climate. CO2 is a GH gas but its a very weak one and the positive feedback loops that are programmed into climate models simply does not exist in nature, in fact they maybe negative looping going on.
And to top that, the Sun looks to be going into a cooling phase and the Earth into a little ice age again so any added warming will be beneficial. By the time we come out of it again, fossil fuels will be depleted.
Nik
IF CO2 caused climate warming, then as the climate warms, the oceans release more CO2, which in turn would cause more heating, and more release of CO2. This is a positive feedback loop, and would lead to a runaway greenhouse effect. As this has never happened in 600 million years, even when CO2 levels were SEVENTEEN TIMES present level, then CO2 can have no significant effect on climate. Next, as the climate warms, from whatever driving force, areas that have been too cold to germinate seeds, will be able to do so, so more areas will become available for growing food. As pre-industrial temperatures were still in the effect of the Little Ice Age, which caused millions of deaths from starvation due to the cold causing world wide crop failures, when it commenced, return to a warmer worldwide climate will do nothing but good. As to the World Bank, nothing from them can be regarded as honest, as they have a vested interest in Carbon Tax, as the $billions$ required will be printed by them, so lining the pockets of bankers world wide. Climate warming can never cause a ''full blown crisis'' because what will happen is that the Earth will return to the ''Golden Age'' when food crops proliferated, and the worlds population, both human and other were well fed. What will affect the poor most, is the failure of their country's economies due to the loss of revenues, caused by the carbon tax CRAP! !CO2=Global Warming, is a political LIE! Nothing more.
EZ
I recently read an article in this very magazine that caught my attention and hopefully many others. It was a scientific summary of research that had to do with the hole in the ozone layer. Remember when this issue was big? I haven't seen anything on it for years. Anyway, the report said the hole in the ozone layer is responsible for the southern hemisphere problems, ie. Antarctica melting, land turning to deserts, and so on. This unspoken revelation makes the argument that the keepers of the money are exploiting the "global warming" mantra for their own advantage. I can't say I'm surprised but I am somewhat relieved that they're being exposed for what they--devious.
Douglas Bennett Rogers
Industrial era carbon dioxide represents 1% of the total greenhouse effect on the Earth. Human evaporated water represents 5%. I have only heard infrared researchers talking about this. The cracked mud patch in the picture represents a CURE for global warming! If the sky is dry it will radiate a lot of IR back into space!
amazed W1
Sad to say, yet again the UN will not or does not have the courage to major on the ever expanding elephant in the drawing room, which is called excess population of humans. The excess population consumes vet scarcer resources of all kinds and emits ever larger quantities ofpollutants of all kinds.
All the UN will do is publish weak responses, such as the average size of families is reducing and there is consequently a foreseeable upper limit on the global population. Date suggested? 2050, but it is already too late and the increasing scarcity of most resources means that as even they predict there will be increasing poverty, accompanied by what they will also not admit, a return to increasing family sizes.
It's truly amazing that they will not accept the need to deal with population to cope with mass migrations, crop failure and global warming, what ever the source of this is. But then most academics simply will not repeat what they already know on this topic because the resulting uproar at a non-pc observation would result in them loosing their tenure.
Observer101
Really, the ANSWER is WATER! The world needs to figure a way to purify sea water in a very inexpensive way. When water can be delivered to the masses, they can wash, drink and cook with clean water. They can also irrigate and grow food to feed the masses, (while employing people), and perhaps the additional greenery can slow or reverse some of the WARMING that is so feared. Clean, affordable, fresh WATER should be the WORLDS FIRST and FOREMOST priority! With investments from ALL countries, solar, wind, and hydro DESALINATION plants must, and can be built across the globe.
Catweazle
Take two equatorial locations, one in the Sahara desert and one in the Amazon rain forest.
The atmospheric CO2 concentrations between the two will vary very little but there will be a very considerable difference in the atmospheric water vapour.
Now take the diurnal temperature variation - day time versus night time - between the two.
For the desert, NASA gives a variation of an average of 38°C (day), average of -3.9°C (night), giving a diurnal range of ~42°C. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/experiments/biome/biodesert.php
For the rainforest, from the site: https://courses.botany.wisc.edu/botany_422/Lecture/Lect05TropRain.html we find: Diurnal patterns! (not seasonal); up to 2.8 C daily temperature range (sometimes greater than seasonal change!)
So it is very clear indeed that compared to water vapour the effect of atmospheric CO2 is effectively insignificant.