Renewing the Covenant
Resources for Discussion Leaders
UN Climate Chief Figueres warns world is “running out of time” to agree climate treaty
“We’re running out of time…we have to get to zero net emissions by the second half of this
century, and in order to put us on a path to do that we have to reverse the trajectory of GHG
emissions that we have now,” Figueres says.
http://www.rtcc.org/2014/01/06/figueres-not-backing-2015-climate-change-treaty-will-beunacceptable/
Turn Down the Heat: Why A 4º Warmer World Must Be Avoided (World Bank)
“While the global community has committed itself to holding warming below 2°C to prevent ‘dangerous’
climate change, the sum total of current policies—in place and pledged—will very likely lead to warming far
in excess of this level. Indeed, present emission trends put the world plausibly on a path toward 4°C warming
within this century.” (Introduction, pp. 22-23)
http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/
WDSP/IB/2012/12/20/000356161_20121220072749/Rendered/PDF/NonAsciiFileName0.pdf
Assessing "Dangerous Climate Change": Required Reduction of Carbon Emissions to
Protect Young People, Future Generations and Nature (Hansen et al)
“We conclude that the widely accepted target of limiting human made global climate warming to
2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above the preindustrial level is too high and would
subject young people, future generations and nature to irreparable harm. Carbon dioxide (CO2)
emissions from fossil fuel use must be reduced rapidly to avoid irreversible consequences such
as sea level rise large enough to inundate most coastal cities and extermination of many of
today's species. Unabated global warming would also worsen climate extremes.
“Continuation of high fossil fuel emissions, given current knowledge of the consequences, would
be an act of extraordinary witting intergenerational injustice.”
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0081648
Summary at:
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2013/20131202_PopularSciencePlosOneE.pdf
IPCC climate report from Berlin finds UN emissions target not out of reach
“Annual emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases must drop 40-70 percent by 2050 to keep
the global temperature rise below the 2-degree Celsius (3.6-degree F), the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) announced in a report released Sunday. So far, the opposite has
happened: On average global emissions rose by 1 billion tons a year between 2000 and 2010,
outpacing growth in previous decades to reach "unprecedented levels" despite some efforts to
contain them, the IPCC announced.
"There is a clear message from science," IPCC co-chair Ottmar Edenhofer said. "To avoid
dangerous interference with the climate system, we need to move away from business as usual."
“According to scientists, failure to meet the 2-degree target could lead to further droughts, rising
seas and heat waves.”
“Current pledges by governments to reduce emissions by 2020 have set the world on a path
between 3 and 5 degrees C of warming by 2100, according to the IPCC - a potentially
catastrophic level.”
http://www.dw.de/ipcc-climate-report-from-berlin-finds-un-emissions-target-not-out-of-reach/a17563955
James Hansen at MIT
“We need to reduce fossil fuel consumption by 30% by 2024 or 2025…Basically, what we have
to do is decarbonize our energy." Sweden is closest to this decarbonization process and they
made the transition in about a decade.”
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/04/20/1293369/-James-Hansen-at-MIT
The Vanishing Arctic Ice Cap (Dahr Jamail)
“Guy McPherson, professor emeritus of evolutionary biology, natural resources, and ecology at
the University of Arizona and a climate change expert of 25 years, explained to Truthout why the
Arctic is so critically important to the planetary weather system.
"Arctic ice serves as a planetary air conditioner," McPherson said. "We've never had humans on
a planet without Arctic ice, which suggests that the planet is too warm for large-bodied mammals
in the absence of the planetary air conditioner."
“John Nissen is chairman of the Arctic Methane Emergency Group, a collection of scientists and
experts whose mission is to warn the global community of the crisis we face if the Arctic ice
melts…"Arctic sea ice is critical to the Earth System because of its role in controlling the planet's
temperature, climate and currents."
“Nissen believes the greatest risk to human society and the rest of the planet is that if attention is
diverted away from the important role of Arctic sea ice, "intervention to cool the Arctic will be
too late to prevent complete Arctic meltdown, which would surely lead to a collapse of
civilization and a greatly reduced human population. Complete extinction would be in the cards."
“Professor Peter Wadhams, a leading Arctic expert at Cambridge University, has been measuring
Arctic ice for 40 years.
"The fall-off in ice volume is so fast it is going to bring us to zero very quickly," Wadhams told a
reporter. According to current data, he estimates "with 95 percent confidence" that the Arctic
will have completely ice-free summers by 2018.”
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/22790-the-vanishing-arctic-ice-cap
World Bank warns of ‘4-degree’ threshold of global temperature increase
“In what World Bank President Jim Yong Kim acknowledged was a “doomsday scenario,” a
new study by the organization cited the 4-degree increase as a threshold that would be likely to
trigger widespread crop failures and malnutrition and dislocate large numbers of people from
land inundated by rising seas.”
“A 4°C world is likely to be one in which communities, cities and countries would experience
severe disruptions, damage, and dislocation,” the report said. “There is no certainty that
adaptation to a 4°C world is possible.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/world-bank-warns-of-4-degreethreshhold/2012/11/19/aa298dd0-3023-11e2-a30e-5ca76eeec857_story.html
Temperature Rises: What Would They Mean?
1.5ºC - “A global temperature rise of 1.5ºC would be enough to start the melting of permafrost
in Siberia, scientists warned on Thursday. Any widespread thaw in Siberia’s permanently frozen
ground could have severe consequences for climate change. Permafrost covers about 24 percent
of the land surface of the northern hemisphere, and widespread melting could eventually trigger
the release of hundreds of gigatonnes of carbon dioxide and methane, which would have a
massive warming effect.”
http://ourworld.unu.edu/en/1-5c-rise-in-temperature-enough-to-start-permafrost-melt-scientistswarn
2 ºC – “A 2ºC rise is the point at which some of the most devastating and dangerous processes
brought on by climate change could become unavoidable. These include: melting of ice sheets,
drying of many parts of Africa, inundation by salt water of aquifers, risk of water shortages for
2.3 to 3 million people, bleaching of 95% world’s coral resulting in the death of almost all the
world’s coral and destruction of those eco-systems.”
http://www.climatechangeconnection.org/science/2degrees.htm
3ºC- “Sea level rises, the melting of the Greenland Ice sheet and Arctic Permafrost, together with
a 20-30% increase in extreme precipitation…. coral reefs and many rainforests into a ‘colossal
wreck, boundless and bare’, with aridity, heat and drought turning many regions from green to
brown.”
http://www.rtcc.org/2012/12/10/weak-doha-deal-leaves-world-on-pathway-to-3c-by-2040/
4ºC- “Four degrees of warming would be enough to melt all the ice… you would have a
tremendously chaotic situation as you moved away from our current climate towards another
one. That’s a different planet. You wouldn’t recognise it… We are on the verge of creating
climate chaos if we don’t begin to reduce emissions rapidly.”
http://www.350resources.org.uk/2013/07/11/james-hansen-paper-links-co2-temperature-sea-level-and-66millionyear-perspective/

Dramatic increase in the intensity and frequency of high-temperature extremes: the Mediterranean, North Africa,
the Middle East, and the contiguous United States: heat-related deaths, forest fires, harvest losses, exacerbate
existing water scarcity

Rising sea levels; coastal inundation and loss

Ocean acidification – loss of marine life

Drought and Aridity: extensive bio-diversity & eco-system loss

Agriculture: Decrease in crop yields esp. Sub-Saharan Africa, China and U.S.

Water scarcity / Water stress increase: Southern Europe, U.S., South America, Africa, Australia

Forest loss – Die-backs esp. Amazon rain forest

Increased intensity of Tropical Cyclones for some regions

Spread of Pathogens and Vector- Borne Diseases
Most severe impacts:




Sub-Saharan Africa – Food production at risk -reduced length of growing period – undernourishment &
malnutrition
18 million flooded yearly if no adaptation
S. Asia- increased drought
SE Asia – coastal cities flooded: displacements of population
http://www.unric.org/en/images/stories/2012/pdf/Turn_Down_the_heat_Why_a_4_degree_centrigrade_warmer_wor
ld_must_be_avoided.pdf
http://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/Worldbank/document/Full_Report_Vol_2_Turn_Down_The_Heat_%20Cli
mate_Extremes_Regional_Impacts_Case_for_Resilience_Print%20version_FINAL.pdf
Global Emissions Cuts Needed
“Under a major equity approach, developed countries, would need to reduce emissions 25-55%
below 1990 levels by 2025 and by 35-55% below 1990 levels by 2030. In the same period NonAnnex I, or developing countries, would need to maintain their emissions no higher than present
levels and, more likely, significantly below present levels.”
http://climateactiontracker.org/publications/briefing/155/Below-2C-or-1.5C-depends-on-rapidaction-from-both-Annex-I-and-non-Annex-I-countries.html
Consensus: 97% of Climate Scientists Agree
Global Climate Change – “Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that climatewarming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities, and most of the
leading scientific organizations worldwide have issued public statements endorsing this position.
The following is a partial list of these organizations, along with links to their published
statements and a selection of related resources.”
http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/
“Thy Will Be Done”
Consider the climate crisis in the context of The Lord’s Prayer.
What does it mean for our actions here on Earth?
*******
Dahr Jamail | "Devastating" Impacts of Climate Change
Increasing
Tuesday, 13 May 2014 09:45 By Dahr Jamail, Truthout | News Analysis
(Photo via Shutterstock)
"One does not sell the land people walk on."
~ Crazy Horse
A massive collapse of an ice sheet in Western Antarctica has begun and, according to scientists,
is most likely an unstoppable event that will cause an inevitable rise in global sea levels of at
least 10 feet.
The rise will be relatively slow at first, but by 2100 will ramp up sharply. This could happen
sooner, warn the scientists, as the impacts of anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD/climate
change) continue to intensify.
"This is really happening," Thomas P. Wagner, who runs NASA's programs on polar ice and
helped oversee some of the research, said. "There's nothing to stop it now."
On April 13, the world's leading scientific body for the assessment of ACD warned of a
"devastating rise of 4-5C if we carry on as we are."
According to Mike Childs, the head of science, policy and research at Friends of the Earth, an
increase to 4C warming would mean a "devastating" impact on agriculture and human
civilization. Childs added that we would face even more extreme weather events and lose
approximately 20-30 percent of the wildlife on the planet. This assessment may even be overly
hopeful, given that humans have never lived on a planet at 3.5C or higher.
A report released in April by a joint Australian/US research team states that escalating CO2
emissions now threaten the entire marine food chain, given that more than 90 percent of the
excess CO2 in the atmosphere is absorbed by the oceans.
The extreme temperature duality witnessed across the US this past winter is likely to become the
norm, thanks to ACD, and it was again revealed who the largest CO2 emitters are. China, the US
and India lead as the world's largest polluters.
The rapidity with which ACD is progressing now is truly astounding. Greenhouse gas emissions
grew in the first decade of the 21st century at a rate nearly double that of the previous 30 years
combined - this, despite the massive economic downturn in 2008.
With full steam ahead for the industrial growth society that dominates the planet, this dispatch
reveals another month of dramatic impacts and stunning reports that show, starkly, how humans
are disfiguring all facets of the earth.
Earth
According to a recent study published in Nature, increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere
could be lengthening the growing seasons of grasses and other plants. This might seem like good
news, except that another study published in Nature about two weeks later revealed that
increased CO2 emissions are making the world's staple food crops of wheat, rice, maize and
soybeans less nutritious, which is worsening the already serious health problems already suffered
by the billions of malnourished people on the planet.
ACD is also playing a role in causing a dramatic increase in wheat rust, a fungal disease known
as "the polio of the food world," spreading from Africa to South and Central Asia, the Middle
East and now Europe. This is causing calamitous losses for the world's second most important
grain crop after rice, and scientists are very concerned about the dangers this poses to global food
security.
This is in addition to the increasing frequency of agricultural shocks caused by extreme weather
events that are resulting in a surge in food prices that is hitting consumers, as well as everyone in
the food chain, from farmers to agricultural traders to food manufacturers.
In the US, beef prices have already hit an all-time high, since extreme weather like massive
droughts has thinned the country's beef cattle herds to the lowest levels since 1951, when there
was only half the number of people to feed.
The San Jose Tico Times in Costa Rica reported that ACD is causing the collapse of wildlife
habitats, widespread animal extinction, water scarcity and the spreading of diseases across the
already extremely vulnerable populations of Latin America. The region already has the highest
biodiversity on the planet, but one-third of all coral-building species there are already threatened
with extinction, and 40 percent of the mangrove species along the Pacific and Atlantic coasts of
Central America are threatened with extinction.
Escalating temperatures across the US Southwest are causing changes for birds and reptiles - and
while some are benefitting from said changes, others like jays and other birds could lose as much
as 80 percent of their breeding range by 2100, are losing and becoming threatened with
extinction.
In the Arctic region of the planet, permafrost stores vast amounts of organic material that is
teeming with microbes. Scientists are now reporting that as the permafrost thaws, as it is now at
ever-increasing rates, it is changing the composition of the vegetation in the Arctic by releasing
these microbes and accelerating ACD. According to Jeff Chanton, an environmental scientist
who was involved in the study, when the peat in the permafrost thaws, water floods the soil and
the chemistry change in the soil increases greenhouse gas production.
Speaking of the Arctic, in Alaska the landscape is radically changing in the north as melting
permafrost is causing forests to no longer grow straight, as trees are tilting and falling over.
Meanwhile, child psychiatrists, psychologists and educators are reporting escalating anxiety
levels in youth, who are flooded with disconcerting talk and news about the destruction of our
planet.
Water
Water-related phenomena continue to be one of the more obvious ways to observe the impacts of
ACD across the planet.
Storms bringing rainfall amounts and wind speeds more akin to hurricanes than spring showers
deluged the Florida panhandle and parts of Alabama recently. In line with ACD trends, dramatic
rainfall events like this have increased across the US, and in the Southeast, the frequency of
heavy precipitation events has increased by approximately 25 percent over the 1958-2011 period.
In the Northeastern US, due to ACD storms like Hurricane Sandy that flooded New York are
now 20 times more likely to occur than they were 170 years ago, according to a recent study.
In nearby New Jersey, local officials are appealing to the US Army Corps of Engineers to
produce a method to stop the flooding which is expected to continue to worsen.
Across the country in California, while dealing with a record-setting drought, the state is
simultaneously having to plan for flooding of its coastal cities, due to rising seas.
Rotterdam and Ho Chi Minh City are both on the front lines of ACD. Given that both sit on river
deltas and are defined and threatened by their relationship to water, they are on the flood
defensive and making preparations for what is to come.
Global sea levels already rising 2-3 millimeters annually, and increasing. But the GangesBrahmaputra delta is already sinking so rapidly that the local, relative sea level may be rising by
up to 2 centimeters each year, according to a recent study.
On the other end of the spectrum are drought and drought-related problems.
In Alberta, Canada, among other places, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find enough
drinking water. Many residents there are concerned about water tainted by agricultural runoff
that is an increasingly common phenomenon due to ACD as extreme weather events like
flooding become more frequent. The flooding then washes E. coli from horse manure into the
drinking supply.
In New Mexico, water managers in Albuquerque are saying that the Rio Grande may hit a 40year low this summer due to the ongoing drought in that state.
Meanwhile, west of there, the Colorado River's stunted flow, coupled with ongoing drought, has
shrunk water levels at Lake Mead to their lowest level in generations. The Lake Mead reservoir,
which supplies 90 percent of Las Vegas' water, is ebbing "as though a plug had been pulled from
a bathtub drain."
Due to the record-setting drought in California, tens of thousands of young salmon are literally
having to be shipped to the Pacific in hopes of keeping them alive. This is because drought,
ranging from moderate to exceptional, now covers 100 percent of the state for the first time in 15
years.
Local state media outlets are reporting that California's water wars will reach a "new level of
crazy'" this year, as farmers, environmental lawyers, wildlife groups, cities and even the Fresno
County sheriff have posted thoughts in a siege of protests to state officials about the use of this
year's tiny snowpack and half-empty reservoirs.
While researchers tend to shy away from connecting weather extremes to ACD in real time, a
recent study out of Utah State University now links ACD to California's drought.
At Oregon's Crater Lake, where having enough snow for recreation has rarely been an issue
historically, the national park has been gradually losing its iconic snow for the past eight
decades.
The drought that covers most of the southwest has caused a new problem in southern Colorado,
where storms of tumbleweeds have invaded areas, blocking rural roads and irrigation canals, and
even barricading homes and an elementary school.
The situation for southeast Colorado is bleak, as a new dust bowl appears to be setting in.
The impact of nearly four years of deep drought is showing itself in three ways: pastures have
dried up or are choked with drifts of sand; tumbleweeds are blowing into tall hills against fences,
homes and barns; and massive dust storms are erasing topsoil and making it harder to grow
grain, wheat and sunflowers.
Water is now a major issue in Brazil, which holds the world's largest fresh water reserves. Since
most of Brazil's water comes from the Amazon, ongoing drought and deforestation is causing the
once abundant water source to no longer seem infinite.
In Northwestern Haiti, drought is so intense it is threatening the population there, where a lack of
rain in recent months has killed crops in Haiti's poorest region, and left people literally struggling
to survive.
Across the Atlantic, South Sudan is now on the verge of the world's worst famines in a quarter of
a century. The UN now estimates that fully one third of the country's population could be facing
starvation due to inadequate agricultural production stemming from the lack of water.
In India, scientists are concerned about how pollution and rising temperatures are deleteriously
impacting the monsoon, which accounts for three quarters of India's annual rainfall.
In war-ravaged Syria, a looming drought could push millions more people there into hunger and
escalate the already massive refugee crisis, according to the UN.
Scientists are now asking how much longer Mt. Everest might remain climbable. The April 18
icefall that claimed over a dozen lives was the single deadliest climbing accident in the
mountain's history. Yet, the massive icefall across an area that rarely sees them of such scope,
was abruptly followed by several others across the route, underscoring how ACD is altering the
face of the planet.
Ocean life continues to be dramatically impacted by ACD. The critically endangered hawksbill
sea turtle's migration routes are being altered due to ACD, as the beaches they use for hatching
are shrinking.
Increasingly acidic ocean water is dissolving sea snails' shells, according to a recent National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration study. These impacts are clear off the coasts of
California, Oregon and Washington, where scientists have found evidence that increasing acidity
of ocean waters is dissolving the shells of a key species at the base of the food chain.
In Washington State, above-average precipitation spawned in part by ACD helped cause the
deadly landslide that buried dozens of homes. Experts with the US Geological Survey said that
rainfall in the region where the slide occurred was 150-200 percent of the long-term average for
February and March.
Up in the newly ice-free Arctic waters off the coast of Alaska, the waters that are vital to
millions of seabirds that flock north every summer are being exploited by commercial shippers
seeking shorter routes, according to a recent study.
Air
A new method of analyzing publicly available data shows that the portion of days with warm
weather in the US has increased by 25 percent over the past 50 years, and the graph is worth a
look.
ACD and extreme weather events are threatening California's air quality, according to the state's
pollution control officers. This is not good news, given that the American Lung Association
recently released a report finding that almost 150 million people in the country live in areas
where air pollution levels are already unhealthy to breathe - with particle and ozone pollution
increasing the risk of heart disease, lung cancer and asthma attacks - and the situation is
worsening.
New research also shows that suicides in Salt Lake County in Utah escalate during periods of
elevated air pollution.
More confirmation for what is already known came in a new study that shows that Arctic
methane emissions are "certain to trigger warming" as ACD continues to melt permafrost and
release increasingly large amounts of methane into the atmosphere where it is creating a positive
feedback loop.
Fire
Not surprisingly, the number and size of massive wildfires is increasing in the Western US due
to rising temperatures and worsening drought from ACD, and new research shows that these
trends will continue in the coming decades. This, along with several early-season fires and fires
that are occurring at twice the normal rate already for this year, has caused California state
officials to ramp up preparations for what could well be another record year of burns.
Researchers from the University of Utah released a report showing that over the last three
decades, wildfires across the western US have, indeed, been growing both larger and more
frequent.
Extreme heat and exceptionally dry conditions have already turned Oklahoma into a tinderbox,
where multiple wildfires have already erupted during a heat wave that was unprecedented for this
early in the season.
A different kind of fire has spread across North Dakota, where towering flames from oil and gas
wells fill the sky above the Berthold Indian Reservation as the natural gas flares are causing
grass fires, creating driving hazards, and contributing to CO2 emission and further accelerating
ACD.
Things are even worse in the Amazon, where drought and deforestation are pushing the region
towards a tipping point that will cause rapid, large-scale destruction during drier years, according
to a recent study.
Denial and Reality
ACD has progressed enough that the UN has warned that renewable energy resources need to be
increased three to four times if there is to be any hope of preventing a global catastrophe.
UN-appointed climate experts recently reported that since countries have already waited so long
to take the dramatic actions necessary to lessen the impacts of ACD, only a dramatic worldwide
effort over the next 15 years could stave off the disastrous ACD impacts to come.
Yet mitigating ACD is more challenging than ever, and becoming increasingly so with each
passing day. CO2 emissions continue to set annual records, and nothing short of a wartime
response is warranted. Nevertheless, governments around the world have made, at best,
extremely weak efforts towards transitioning away from fossil fuels.
Meanwhile, the march of ACD continues unabated.
March 2014 was the fourth warmest March ever in recorded history, globally, according to
recent NASA data. That makes March the 349th month (over 29 years straight) in which global
temperatures were above the historic average.
Given that methane is already being released from melting Arctic permafrost at record levels,
March also revealed the disconcerting fact that Northern Siberia was a full nine degrees
Fahrenheit warmer than normal, with Norway and Denmark averaging temperatures nearly 7
degrees warmer than normal.
A recent study published in Nature Climate Change showed that part of East Antarctica is more
vulnerable than expected to thawing that could trigger an unstoppable slide of ice into the ocean
and raise world sea levels for thousands of years. According to the study, the area of Antarctica
in question has enough ice to increase global sea levels by 10 to 13 feet. Antarctica holds enough
ice to raise sea levels 188 feet if it ever all melts.
For those in the US who are still in ACD denial, who are now a distinct minority, Showtime has
released an ACD TV series using movie stars as ACD correspondents to appeal to the mass
market.
Even corporate media outlets are publishing and broadcasting information about the realities of
ACD, like this data on region-specific particulars about how ACD will impact people across the
US.
In case that wasn't enough to drive home the point, Australia's Treasury Secretary Martin
Parkinson told an audience in Washington that it has become inevitable that his country would
have to resettle ACD refugees in the future.
Other preparations include US researchers from the University of Delaware racing the clock to
try to develop chickens that will be able to survive on a hotter planet.
While not necessarily recent news, it came to the fore again that scientists are again considering
a formal declaration that 1950 marked the dawn of a new geological epoch called the
Anthropocene - an age defined by human impact on the planet, particular in the form of ACD.
In early May, the White House released the National Climate Assessment, which stated
unequivocally that ACD is a clear and present danger, and has moved from a distant threat to a
present-day reality, and that no US citizen will remain unscathed. The report, a culmination of
five years of work, provides a comprehensive review of both observed and projected impacts of
ACD. Key images and graphs can be viewed here.
Lastly and most importantly, if you choose only one link to view from this article, click this one
– it will astound you to see in broad historical context (800,000 years) just how abruptly and
profoundly humans have impacted the earth by pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. The
visualization underscores the true massiveness of the crisis we are in.
Copyright, Truthout.org. Reprinted with permission
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/23660-devastating-impacts-of-climate-change-increasing
Dahr Jamail
Dahr Jamail, a Truthout staff reporter, is the author of The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to
Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, (Haymarket Books, 2009), and Beyond the Green Zone:
Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq, (Haymarket Books, 2007).
Jamail reported from Iraq for more than a year, as well as from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and
Turkey over the last ten years, and has won the Martha Gellhorn Award for Investigative
Journalism, among other awards.
By Dahr Jamail, Truthout | News Analysis