Game-Changing Climate Decisions: 2013 May be the Year
Apr 17
The world has good reason to finally begin focusing on climate change, as there have been extreme weather events around the world, breaking records an unprecedented rates. The U.S. experienced the hottest year on record in 2012, with a combination of wildfires, droughts and increasing sea levels. The drought alone is expected to reduce the U.S. GDP by around 1% and is currently listed as the highest priced natural disaster in the history of the U.S. (so far). Hurricane Sandy reduced the GDP by another 0.5%. New studies have resulted in information indicating that climate change is costing around $1.2 trillion per year on a global scale or 1.5% of the global GDP.
There is a need to shift from the high carbon emissions energy to sustainable and renewable energy and this is a critical step to have any impact on climate change. However, with that said, there are many that seem to want to change to simply low-carbon energy and this may be the wrong direction. The low-carbon energy choices typically include shale gas, which has increased almost tenfold since 2005 in India, China, Argentina and other shale rich nations. The lower carbon emission energies may be a step in a better direction, but cannot be a base for reducing the carbon growth path. Greenhouse gas emissions from all of the industrial countries absolutely need to be reduced by eighty to ninety percent by the year 2050 to prevent accelerated climate change effects and choosing lower carbon emission energies will not get us to that goal.
Sources: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/01/22/business/steer-climate-change-davos/index.html?iref=allsearch
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4 Responses to “Game-Changing Climate Decisions: 2013 May be the Year”
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It’s about time, and I guess it took Obama to make a stand for the entire world. None of the Republicans would go against their oil baron contributors.
April 17th, 2013 at 6:01 pmThere won’t be a land, a country or even a beach for our grandkids to go to if we don’t make game-changing moves now. There are too many things happening around the world for people to ignore the climate problem any longer. Taking a stand is what we do best, so we should just do it. Everyone else will follow, they usually do.
April 16th, 2013 at 2:14 pmIf the U.S. is the leading country of the world, we need to lead. Stepping up and being accountable is part of maturity and climate change is a reality that means everyone needs to be accountable.
April 15th, 2013 at 9:45 pmIt doesn’t just take a village, in this case, it takes a global community. America needs to take the lead on this and make all of the other countries that we give so much money to, march in line with us. If we don’t stop global warming now, we may be too late. The consequences are too great to ignore.
April 14th, 2013 at 10:53 am