Transcript GDP by end of century

Climate emergency
The good news ... and the bad…
An artist asked the gallery owner if there had been any interest in his paintings on
display at that time.
"I have good news and bad news, "the owner replied. "The good news is that a
gentleman inquired about your work and wondered if it would appreciate in value
after your death. When I told him it would, he bought all 15 of your paintings.
"That's wonderful!" the artist exclaimed. "What's the bad news?"
"The man was your doctor."
So… the bad news, followed by the
good news….
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Are things hotting up?
The “false debate” and who’s behind it
Global warming and its impacts
Why things are getting worse
Effects on global populations
Solutions – effective and ineffective
The need for civil society campaigning –
don’t leave it to the “experts”!
Are things hotting up?
A “staggering” new study (Boyce et al.2010) from
Canadian researchers has shown that warmer seawater
has reduced phytoplankton, the base of the marine food
chain, by 40% since 1950… roughly 1% per year
Phytoplankton are 50% of the basic
energy of the earth’s food chain…
So climate change is not just a prediction –
it’s happening now!
But it will get worse if we fail to act….
Closer to home..
Lower Lakes and Coorong
Great Barrier Reef - most coral dead by 2050:
Queensland University’s Centre for Marine Studies
The “false debate” and who’s
behind it
“There is no debate”
22,000 peer reviewed climate articles per
year… not one denies climate change.
“Climate denial is the preserve of
the lunar right…”
“Fossil fuel mafia”
Think tanks
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Business-Managed Democracy
• “Business-managed democracies are those in which the
political and cultural arrangements are managed in the
interests of business.”
Sharon Beder, 2009.
Global warming and its impacts
4 degrees likely by 2055; highly probable by
2070.
What will 4 degrees look like?.. In your
native country? Here?
MIT April 2009: 5.1 degrees by
2090s
Wilkins Ice Shelf 2009
70% of Earth’s land surface desert by 2025 - currently 40%. (UN
Desertification Report 2009, cited in Foster 2009)
40% of Africa’s arable land threatened by the end of the
century in a 4 degree scenario
US Energy Information Administration 2010
Why things are getting worse
Despite all the talk and information ,Kyoto Protocols, and carbon
trading schemes carbon keeps entering the atmosphere at an
increasing rate:
1990s – 2%
growth per year
2000s – 3%
2011 – 5%
(IEA 2011)
… why..???
Money – Commodity - Money
Basic law of capital :
accumulate!
• Capital must keep expanding – and will
inevitably collide with the ecosphere.
• 3% growth = 1600% by 2100…….25600%
by 2200
• Sustainable capitalism.. An oxymoron?
1750 $125,000,000,000
1950 $ 4,000,000,000,000
2000 $ 40,000,000,000,000
2010 $ 50,000,000,000,000 (Harvey 2010)
World GDP under capitalism
GDP by end of century - cf. population! (Garnaut 2008)
• How many will survive/die if temperatures
rise by 4 degrees?
Effects on global populations
Professor Kevin Anderson, director of the
Tyndall Centre for Climate Change (UK),
believes only around 10 per cent of the planet's
population – around half a billion people – will
survive if global temperatures rise by 4C.
• The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change:150 million environmental refugees would exist by 2050.
• coastal flooding, shoreline erosion and agricultural degradation were
seen as major factors contributing to bulk of environmental
refugees.
The International Organisation for Migration: one billion people
could be 'environmentally displaced from their
original habitat'