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Poverty Warming Turn

Poverty Warming Turn............................................................................................................................................1 1NC- poverty= warming..........................................................................................................................................2 ext- wealth= fossil fuels...........................................................................................................................................3 ext- wealth= fossil fuels...........................................................................................................................................4 ext- wealth= fossil fuels...........................................................................................................................................5 Fossil fuels= warming..............................................................................................................................................6 Fossil fuels = terrorism............................................................................................................................................7 Terrorism= extinction..............................................................................................................................................8 Fossil Fuel Impact - Democracy..............................................................................................................................9 Fossil Fuel Impact - Economy...............................................................................................................................10 Waste Internal Link................................................................................................................................................11 Waste Internal Link................................................................................................................................................12 A2- No warming....................................................................................................................................................13 A2 not anthro.........................................................................................................................................................14 A2 squo= warming ..............................................................................................................................................15 A2 warming slow...................................................................................................................................................16 Impact- extinction (laundry list)............................................................................................................................17 Impact- biod...........................................................................................................................................................18 Turns case- disease (general).................................................................................................................................21 Turns case- disease (aids)......................................................................................................................................22 Turns case- disease (malaria).................................................................................................................................23 Turns case- food prices..........................................................................................................................................24 Turns case- Environmental Justice........................................................................................................................25

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1NC- poverty= warming

Warming Turn: a. Those with higher incomes have higher fossil fuel consumption Ravilious, contributing editor, 2009 (Kate Ravilious is a contributing editor to environmentalresearchweb. Apr 1, 2009 http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/futures/38530) Now a new study reveals the increase in appetite for fossil fuels has not been spread evenly across the population. High-income households have ramped up their consumption levels far faster than low income ones. Meanwhile a rapidly expanding leisure and services industry has also guzzled a large share. Eleni Papathanasopoulou and Tim Jackson of the Research group on Lifestyles, Values and Environment (RESOLVE) at the University of Surrey, UK, found that the gap between the rich and poor has been increasing over time. The highest earners increased their fossil-fuel consumption by 50% between 1968 and 2000, while the lowest earners increased their consumption
by only 20% over the same time period. But household income doesnt tell the entire story. When Papathanasopoulou and Jackson analysed the data in more detail it became clear that spending habits have changed dramatically too. The scientists separated out the data into direct purchases of fuel (gas piped into the home, petrol pumped into the car and electricity flowing down the wires into our houses) and indirect purchases of fuel (the resources required to produce and maintain all other goods and services that we buy

). Indirect

fossil-fuel resources have seen a surge in demand, particularly by those on higher incomes. This highlights the
increased volume in the purchase of goods and services demanded by households, Papathanasopoulou told environmentalresearchweb. Exotic holidays, gym memberships and eating out are all more common these days, meanwhile make-do-and-mend has gone out of fashion and most of us buy new goods instead.

b. Runaway Global Warming causes extinction Tickell, Environmental Researcher, 08 (Oliver Tickell, Campaigner and researcher on climate issues and has contributed pieces to a number of major international media outletshttp, 8/11/08, www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/11/climatechange) We need to get prepared for four degrees of global warming, Bob Watson [PhD in Chemistry, Award for Scientific Freedom and Responsibility from the American Association for the Advacement of Science] told the Guardian last week. At first sight this looks like wise counsel from the climate science adviser to Defra. But the idea that we could adapt to a 4C rise is absurd and dangerous. Global warming on this scale would be a catastrophe that would mean, in the immortal words that Chief Seattle probably never spoke, "the end of living and the beginning of survival" for humankind. Or perhaps the beginning of our extinction. The collapse of the polar ice caps would become inevitable, bringing long-term sea level rises of 70-80 metres. All the world's coastal plains would be lost, complete with ports, cities, transport and industrial infrastructure, and much of the world's most productive farmland. The world's geography would be transformed much as it was at the end of the last ice age, when sea levels rose by about 120 metres to create the Channel, the North Sea and Cardigan Bay out of dry land. Weather would become extreme and unpredictable, with more frequent and severe droughts, floods and hurricanes. The Earth's carrying capacity would be hugely reduced. Billions would undoubtedly die. Watson's call was supported by the government's former chief scientific adviser, Sir David King [Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford], who warned that "if we get to a four-degree rise it is quite possible that we would begin to see a
runaway increase". This is a remarkable understatement. The climate system is already experiencing significant feedbacks, notably the summer melting of the Arctic sea ice. The more the ice melts, the more sunshine is absorbed by the sea, and the more the Arctic warms.

And as the Arctic warms, the release of billions of

tonnes of methane a greenhouse gas 70 times stronger than carbon dioxide over 20 years captured under melting permafrost is already under way.
gigatonnes of carbon into the atmosphere, both as CO2 and as methane from bogs and seabed sediments

To see how far this process could go, look 55.5m years to the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, when a global temperature increase of 6C coincided with the release of about 5,000

. Lush subtropical forests grew in polar regions, and sea levels rose to 100m higher than today. It appears that an initial warming pulse triggered other warming processes. Many scientists warn that this historical event may be analogous to the present: the warming caused by human emissions could propel us towards a similar hothouse Earth.

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ext- wealth= fossil fuels

Higher income levels ensure higher fossil fuel use expenditures on travel and public transit Papathanasopoulou and Jackson, Centre for Environmental Strategy, 2008 (Eleni Papathanasopoulou and Tim Jackson of the Centre for Environmental Strategy, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, GU2 7TH, United Kingdom 24 August 2008 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science? _ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VDY-4TS80VK1&_user=4257664&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_acct=C000022698&_v ersion=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=4257664&md5=a1829d654560fa698a979f681e140767) The higher rate of increase in fossil resources attributable to the top quintile's expenditure on travel compared to the lower quintiles has meant an increase in the inequality of distribution amongst these two quintiles. For instance, the difference in fossil resources attributed to the highest quintile compared to the lowest quintile was 1.46Mtoe in 1968, but this increased to 2.86 in 2000. The indirect fossil resource inequality associated with travel increased by 40% over the period. Increases in embodied fossil resource attributed to high income groups' expenditure for travel are predominately due to the increase in air travel and high usage of rail travel in upper income quintiles. In 1978, there were approximately 20million UK air passengers, while in 1998 this increased to approximately 60million passengers (CAA, 1998). The CAA (1998)survey notes that 33% of total UK air passengers in 1998 were from the high income groups, while only 10% were from low income groups. Additionally, the Department for Transport (2003a) notes that the higher the income of people the more rail trips made. In 1999/2001, [t]hose in the highest income quintile made an average of 49 trips a year, more than twice the number of those in the second highest income quintile, and more than 5 times as many as those in the lowest two quintiles. (DfT, 2003a, pp. 2). The only counter-trend is discernible in relation to bus use. In 1999/2001, for example, buses were more frequently used by people in the lowest quintiles who made 98 bus trips a year, whereas the highest quintile only made 29 trips a year (DfT, 2003b, pp. 1).

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ext- wealth= fossil fuels

Worlds richest exacerbate warming and pollution Pearce, 2001 UK environment journalist of the year, 09 (Fred Pearce, 2001 UK environment journalist of the year, contributor to the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian, April 13, 2009, Yale Environment 360, http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_17573.cfm) The world's population quadrupled to six billion people during the 20th century. It is still rising and may reach 9 billion by 2050. Yet for at least the past century, rising per-capita incomes have outstripped the rising head count several times over. And while incomes don't translate precisely into increased resource use and pollution, the correlation is distressingly strong. Moreover, most of the extra consumption has been in rich countries that have long since given up adding substantial numbers to their population. By almost any measure, a small proportion of the world's people take the majority of the world's resources and produce the majority of its pollution. Take carbon dioxide emissions - a measure of our impact on climate but also a surrogate for fossil fuel consumption. Stephen Pacala, director of the Princeton Environment Institute, calculates that the world's richest half-billion people that's about 7 percent of the globalpopulation - are responsible for 50 percent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions. Meanwhile the poorest 50 percent are responsible for just 7 percent of emissions.

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ext- wealth= fossil fuels

Fossil fuel use is the highest for the wealthy Share International, 98 (Share International, 1998 http://www.share-international.org/ARCHIVES/economics/ec_sirunaway.htm) Runaway growth in consumption is placing unprecedented pressure on the environment and putting those who consume the least in double jeopardy. While rising consumption in developing countries is also stressing the environment, consumption levels are not even close to those of industrialized countries. The burning of fossil fuels has almost quintupled since 1950 and the wealthiest one-fifth of the worlds people consume about 53 per cent of the total. Per capita carbon dioxide emissions are 21 metric tons a year in the United States compared with three metric tons in China. The poorest one-fifth of the worlds people, who are responsible for just three per cent of carbon dioxide emissions, live in low-lying regions that are most vulnerable to the rising sea levels associated with global warming. With a one metre rise in sea level, Bangladesh would lose 17 per cent of its land area. Egypt would lose 12 per cent and seven million Egyptians would lose their homes. Much of the land mass of small island nations, such as Maldives and Tuvalu, would also disappear beneath the waves.

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Fossil fuels= warming

Fossil fuel causes global warming O Driscoll and Vergano, 07
(Patrick O'Driscoll and Dan Vergano, writers for USA Today, a national American daily newspaper with the widest circulation http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0621/p10s01-wogi.html A major international analysis of climate change due Friday will conclude that humankind's reliance on fossil fuels coal, fuel oil and natural gas is to blame for global warming, according to three scientists familiar with the research on which it is based. The gold-standard Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report represents "a real convergence happening here, a consensus that this is a total global no-brainer," says U.S. climate scientist Jerry Mahlman, former director of the federal government's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in New Jersey. "The big message that will come out is the strength of the attribution of the warming to human activities," says researcher Claudia Tebaldi of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo. Mahlman, who crafted the IPCC language used to define levels of scientific certainty, says the new report will lay the blame at the feet of fossil fuels with "virtual certainty," meaning 99% sure. That's a significant jump from "likely," or 66% sure, in the group's last report in 2001, Mahlman says. His role in this year's effort involved spending two months reviewing the more than 1,600 pages of research that went into the new

assessment.

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Fossil fuels = terrorism

Fossil fuel dependence props up terrorist activities Sandalow, scholar at the Brookings Institution, January 22 2007 (David Sandalow is Energy and Environment Scholar at The Brookings Institution. Ending Oil Dependence January 22 2007 http://www.brookings.edu/views/papers/fellows/sandalow20070122.pdf) The United States is in a long war. Islamic fundamentalists struck our shores and are determined to do so again. Like the Cold War, this struggle has many causes and will last for generations. Unlike the Cold War, oil dependence plays a central role in the struggle. Oil dependence lies behind the jihadist threat not as the only cause, but as an important one. For example, according to Brent Scowcroft, National Security Adviser at the time of the first Gulf War, what gave enormous urgency to [Saddams invasion of Kuwait] was the issue of oil.5 After removing Saddam from Kuwait in 1991, U.S. troops remained in Saudi Arabia where their presence bred great resentment. Osama bin Ladens first fatwa, in 1996, was titled Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places. Today, deep resentment of the U.S. role in the Persian Gulf remains a powerful recruitment tool for jihadists. That resentment grows not just from the war in Iraq, but from the U.S. relationship with the House of Saud, the presence of U.S. forces throughout the region and more. Yet the United States faces severe constraints in responding to this resentment. With half the worlds proven oil reserves, the worlds cheapest oil and the worlds only spare production capacity, the Persian Gulf will remain the indispensable region for the global economy so long as modern vehicles run only on oil. To protect oil flows, the U.S. policymakers will feel compelled to maintain relationships and exert power in the region in ways likely to fuel the jihadist movement. Compounding this problem, the huge money flows into the region from oil purchases help finance terrorist networks. Saudi money provides critical support for madrassas with virulent anti-American views. Still worse, diplomatic efforts to enlist Saudi government help in choking off such funding, or even to investigate terrorist attacks, are hampered by the priority we attach to preserving Saudi cooperation in managing world oil markets. This points to a broader problem -- oil dependence reduces the leverage of the world community in responding to threats from oil-exporting nations. Today, the most prominent threat comes from Iran, whose nuclear ambitions could further destabilize the Persian Gulf and put terrifying new weapons into the hands of terrorists. Yet efforts to respond to this threat with multilateral sanctions have foundered on fears that Iran would retaliate by withholding oil from world markets. Experts predict this would drive prices above $100 per barrel a risk many governments are unwilling to accept. In short, three decades after the first oil shocks -- and a quarter-century after the humiliating capture of U.S. diplomats in Tehran we remain hostage to our continuing dependence on oil.

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Terrorism= extinction
And terrorism results in extinction Sid-Ahmed 2004 (Mohamed Sid-Ahmed, Managing Editor for Al-Ahali, 2004, Extinction! Issue no.705, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/705/op5.htm) A nuclear attack by terrorists will be much more critical than Hiroshima and Nagazaki, even if -- and this is far from certain the weapons used are less harmful than those used then, Japan, at the time, with no knowledge of nuclear technology, had no choice but to capitulate. Today, the technology is a secret for nobody. So far, except for the two bombs dropped on Japan, nuclear weapons have been used only to threaten. Now we are at a stage where they can be detonated. This completely changes the rules of the game. We have reached a point where anticipatory measures can determine the course of events. Allegations of a terrorist connection can be used to justify anticipatory measures, including the invasion of a sovereign state like Iraq. As it turned out, these allegations, as well as the allegation that Saddam was harbouring WMD, proved to be unfounded. What would be the consequences of a nuclear attack by terrorists? Even if it fails, it would further exacerbate the negative features of the new and frightening world in which we are now living. Societies would close in on themselves, police measures would be stepped up at the expense of human rights, tensions between civilisations and religions would rise and ethnic conflicts would proliferate. It would also speed up the arms race and develop the awareness that a different type of world order is imperative if humankind is to survive. But the still more critical scenario is if the attack succeeds. This could lead to a third world war, from which no one will emerge victorious. Unlike a conventional war which ends when one side triumphs over another, this war will be without winners and losers. When nuclear pollution infects the whole planet, we will all be losers.

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Fossil Fuel Impact - Democracy

Fossil fuel consumption corrodes democracy promotion abroad Sandalow, scholar at the Brookings Institution, January 22 2007 (David Sandalow is Energy and Environment Scholar at The Brookings Institution. Ending Oil Dependence January 22 2007 http://www.brookings.edu/views/papers/fellows/sandalow20070122.pdf) Oil wealth also corrodes democratic institutions. This dynamic is not inevitable, but it is widespread. A growing body of scholarly work explores this topic, concluding that oil wealth is strongly associated with corruption and authoritarian rule.7 A few examples underscore this trend. Bahrain, the Persian Gulf country with the smallest oil reserves, was also the first to hold free elections.8 As oil prices climbed in recent years, both Vladmir Putin and Hugo Chavez moved away from democratic institutions and toward more authoritarian rule. In Nigeria, oil abundance contributes to widespread corruption.

Democracy is critical to prevent extinction Diamond, Hoover Institution, 1995 (Larry Diamond, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, December, PROMOTING DEMOCRACY IN THE 1990S, 1995, p. http://www.carnegie.org//sub/pubs/deadly/diam_rpt.html //) Nuclear, chemical and biological weapons continue to proliferate. The very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these new and unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty and openness. The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass destruction to use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are more environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the destruction of their environments.

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Fossil Fuel Impact - Economy

Fossil fuel dependence leads to recessions and other economic impacts Sandalow, scholar at the Brookings Institution, January 22 2007 (David Sandalow is Energy and Environment Scholar at The Brookings Institution. Ending Oil Dependence January 22 2007 http://www.brookings.edu/views/papers/fellows/sandalow20070122.pdf) Oil dependence exposes the United States economy to the volatility of world oil markets. Because oil price increases can occur suddenly, consumers and businesses may be unable to adjust behavior and forced to incur higher expenses when prices rise. The impacts on low-income families and oilintensive businesses may be especially severe.14 The oil price spikes of the 1970s have often been blamed for the recessions that followed.15 However, this view has been challenged by Ben Bernanke and others who argue that restrictive monetary played a larger role in those downturns.16 Significantly, the oil price increases of 2005-2006 did not produce a recession. Possible reasons include sound management of monetary policy and a lower ratio of oil use to GDP than during prior price spikes. Nevertheless, the climb in oil prices during the past few years imposed considerable costs. In 2006, U.S. payments abroad for oil were more than $250 billion. 17 Between summer 2003 and summer 2006, world oil prices rose from roughly $25 per barrel to more than $78 per barrel. For several African countries, increased oil costs during this period substantially exceeded amounts saved through debt relief. For the United States, each $10/barrel increase results in roughly $50 billion of additional foreign payments annually (approximately 0.4% of GDP).18

Oil and fossil fuel dependence leads to supply shocks hurting the US economy Scire, professor of political science, February 10 2008 (Dr. John Scire is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at UNR, where he has taught an energy policy course for the last 10 years. Sunday, February 10, 2008 http://www.nevadaappeal.com/article/20080210/OPINION/227691244) Insecure Oil currently comes from Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Nigeria and several other smaller Middle Eastern exporters. According to the U.S. Energy Department, we import 1.4 million of barrels of oil per day from Saudi Arabia along with 800,000 barrels from other Persian Gulf states, 1.4 million barrels from Venezuela and 1.1 million barrels from Nigeria. At $100 per barrel, the U.S. will be sending $51 billion a year to the Saudis alone in 2008. Oil dependency from unstable or hostile countries has huge economic, military, national security, and political implications for our country. The economic costs include net capital outflows, loss of competitiveness in world markets and the costs of supply and demand disruptions. In 2007, estimated net capital outflows from the U.S. to oil exporters exceeded $150 billion. The money used to purchase oil today is not repatriated in purchases of U.S. goods and services by oil exporting states as it was in the 1970s. As a result, the American economy loses $150 billion every year and that money only increases other countries' competitiveness. Supply disruptions are another economic cost of dependency. In a 2003 report, the National Defense Council Foundation (NDCF) estimated total costs to the American economy from supply disruptions in 1973, 1979, and 1990 at $2.3 to $2.5 trillion.

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Waste Internal Link

a. Rich areas generate more waste than poorer areas Barun Mitra, director of Liberty Institute, March 2000 (Barun Mitra, director of Liberty Institute, a research organization that promotes free-market economics, PERC Report Poverty, Wealth, and Waste March 2000 http://www.perc.org/pdf/mar00.pdf) Poor societies can afford little waste in the traditional sense. Poverty ensures that every bit of a resource is reused, recycled, or otherwise utilized. In India, an enormous army of rag-pickers continuously supplies millions of trash merchants all over the country. They pick up virtually everything that might have a potential value. The rag-pickers, particularly in urban centers, have an unmatched capacity to extract and sort every bit of material that can be reused, recycled, or have other potential uses. This interest in resource utilization pervades almost all strata of society. Families in India willingly wait for weeks in the hope of getting a higher price for their old newspapers. Trash dealers frequent homes on a regular basis to buy newspapers, plastic and glass bottles, discarded furniture, or household gadgets. These are then meticulously sorted and sold for reuse, repair, recycling, resource recovery, and any number of other uses. The pattern of waste utilization changes from poor rural areas to small towns to big cities. In the smaller and poorer areas, the volume of actual waste is very small, because whatever material can have some possible utility is reused or repaired. Consequently, dealing with waste as an economic activity is minimal. As one moves into towns, waste acquires a more economically vibrant characteristic. Household consumption levels are higher, and so is the quantity of waste. Consequently, there are more trash dealers to exploit the economic potential of the larger volume of waste. There are two reasons why recycling in poorer countries like India is so thorough. First, the low value of labor justifies the long hours spent extracting material. For ragpickers, there are few other ways to earn money. Second, because the country is poor, many products made from virgin raw materials are luxury goods, simply too expensive for most people. Thus, there is a ready market for reused and recycled goods. The painstaking efforts to recycle materials do not mean that a poor country like India is pollution free. Indeed, the low quantity of waste generated in an economy with technological backwardness and little capital keeps the waste industry from graduating above small-scale local initiatives. And higher pollution occurs because there isnt the technology to capture highly dispersed waste such as sulfur dioxide from smokestacks or heavy metals that flow into wastewater. In contrast to the careful reuse and recycling of waste in poor countries, per capita generation of waste is much higher in wealthy countries (although pollution is lower). This obvious difference is often used to extol the virtues of lower consumption in poor countries and the evils of consumerist lifestyles in the latter. But the explanation is more complex. Rich societies generate more wastes because their citizens can afford to do without the leftovers, whether in the form of food, packaging, worn-out clothes, or energy. Another way of looking at it is that the value of the waste, even while it is substantial in terms of weight or volume, is so small in comparison to individuals disposable income that most people find the value of waste (in economic terms, the marginal utility of waste) to be quite low. Many cheap substitutes are of better quality. Many items that are reused in India are thrown away in the United States because they just arent worth very much to people who can afford new products.

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Waste Internal Link

b. Food waste leads to environmental impacts such as global warming Jonathan Bloom, staff writer for Culinate, November 19 2007 (Jonathan Bloom, staff writer for Culinate, an online food news source and resource, November 19 2007, http://www.culinate.com/articles/features/wasted_food) As a symbol of American abundance, Thanksgiving hints at just how much food there is to squander. And squander we do, from farm to fork. More than 40 percent of all food produced in America is not eaten, according to research by former University of Arizona anthropologist Timothy Jones. That amounts to more than 29 million tons of food waste each year, or enough to fill the Rose Bowl every three days. Nationwide, food scraps make up 17 percent of what we send to landfills. This waste often goes undetected. I think that without a doubt, when people say that they dont waste food, they believe it. Theres a huge disconnect, says William Rathje, a Stanford archaeologist who ran the University of Arizona Garbage Project for years. People dont pay attention to their food waste because it goes straight into the garbage or disposal. Its not like newspapers that stack up in the garage. We live in a culture of excess, and food is no exception. The average American wastes more than half a pound of food per day. Im no mathematical whiz, but that would be a whole Quarter Pounder at lunch and dinner. When you count whats put down the disposal, 25 percent of what enters our homes is not eaten, Rathje reports. And as we can all attest, restaurants massive portions fill their large plates, our stomachs, and then their dumpsters. Exceptions to this squandering like T.G.I. Fridays Right Portion, Right Price menu are few. Every day, Jones calculates, American restaurants throw away more than 6,000 tons of food. There are consequences to our national habit of sending food to landfills. American food waste has significant environmental, [and] economic, and cultural ramifications. Wasting food squanders the time, energy, and resources both money and oil used to produce that food. Increasingly, great amounts of fossil fuel are used to fertilize, apply pesticides to, harvest, and process food. Still more gas is spent transporting food from farm to processor, wholesaler to restaurant, store to households, and finally to the landfill. Thats why Michael Pollan writes in The Omnivores Dilemmathat it takes more than one calorie of fossil-fuel energy to yield one calorie of food. Food rotting in landfills contributes to global warming. Landfills are Americas primary source of methane emissions, and the second-largest component of landfills are organic materials. When food decomposes in a landfill, it releases methane, a greenhouse gas 21 times more damaging than carbon dioxide. Furthermore, wet food waste is the main threat to groundwater or stream pollution in the event of a liner leak or large storm.

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A2- No warming
Recent data proves warming is happening Dlouhy, 6/17 (Jennifer A. Dlouhy, Currently cover Congress and legal affairs for Hearst Newspapers, as part of the chain's Washington, D.C. bureau. She has a Bachelor of Journalism , Journalism, Political Science 6/17/09, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/06/17/MNNP188DSH.DTL Top government scientists on Tuesday warned that climate change already is wreaking devastating changes
on the United States, threatening the Southwest with blistering heat, the Atlantic Coast with dangerous hurricanes and the Midwest with flooding. The alarms were delivered in a nearly 200-page report, begun by the Bush administration, that documents how the changing climate is reshaping U.S. coastlines and could affect American agriculture. The report finds that U.S. temperatures rose about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the past 50 years, and it projects that without major changes there could be an additional 2 to 11 degrees of additional warming this century. The study also includes a new forecast about how quickly oceans will rise because of melting glaciers and the greater volume of warmer water. The report predicts that sea levels will rise by 3 to 4 feet during this century. That could leave some coastal communities under water. Because two-thirds of the nation's oil and gas imports come through the Gulf of Mexico, "vital energy and transportation infrastructure will be at risk with expected sea level rise and associated storm surge," said Jerry Melillo, director of the Ecosystems Center at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass. He's one of the study's authors. Thomas Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center, predicted that "extreme heat waves, which are currently rare, will become much more common in the future," even as the U.S. population ages, and that could increase the number of deaths from heat-related illnesses. Other scientists involved in the study, including Commerce Under Secretary Jane Lubchenco, said they hope that the report's focus on the immediate repercussions of global warming - rather than just effects that might not be felt for decades - will inject urgency into the climate change debate. "Much of the foot-dragging in addressing climate change is a reflection of the perception that climate change is way down the road, it's in the future, and that it only affects remote parts of the planet," Lubchenco said. "This report ... provides the concrete scientific

information that says unequivocally that climate change is happening now, and it is happening in our own back yards and it affects the kinds of things people care about." The Obama administration has made countering climate
change a top priority, and House Democrats are advancing legislation that would place new national limits on the amount of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases that businesses can emit into the atmosphere. Most House Republicans oppose the legislation, which also is viewed warily by many moderate Democrats worried that the new pollution caps could chill industrial activity, jeopardizing U.S. businesses and jobs. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who is spearheading the Senate's push for climate change legislation, said the report would "add urgency to the growing momentum in Congress for legislation that cuts global warming pollution."

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A2 not anthro
Human action is the only way to explain recent rapid warming Stern, 07
(Nicholas Stern is Former Head Economist for the World Bank, I.G. Patel Chair at the London School of Economics and Political Science, The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review, The report of a team commissioned by the British Government to study the economics of climate change led by Siobhan Peters, Head of G8 and International Climate Change Policy Unit, Cambridge University Press, p. 3-7)

Human activities are changing the composition of the atmosphere and its properties. Since pre-industrial times (around 1750), carbon dioxide concentrations have increased by just over one third from 280 parts per million (ppm) to 380 ppm today (Figure 1.1), predominantly as a result of burning fossil fuels, deforestation, and other changes in land-use.2 This has been accompanied by rising concentrations of other greenhouse gases, particularly methane and nitrous oxide. There is compelling evidence that the rising levels of greenhouse gases will have a warming effect on the climate through increasing the amount of infrared radiation (heat energy) trapped by the atmosphere: the greenhouse effect (Figure 1.2). In total, the warming effect due to all (Kyoto) greenhouse gases emitted by human activities is now equivalent to around 430 ppm of carbon dioxide (hereafter, CO2 equivalent or CO2e)3 (Figure 1.1) and rising at around 2.3 ppm per year 4. Current levels of greenhouse gases are higher now than at any time in at least the past 650,000 years.5 As anticipated by scientists, global mean surface temperatures have risen over the past century. The Earth has warmed by 0.7C since
around 1900 (Figure 1.3). Global mean temperature is referred to throughout the Review and is used as a rough index of the scale of climate change. This measure is an average over both space (globally across the land-surface air, up to about 1.5 m above the ground, and sea-surface temperature to around 1 m depth) and time (an annual mean over a defined time period). All temperatures are given relative to pre-industrial, unless otherwise stated. As discussed later in this chapter, this warming does not occur evenly across the planet. Over the past 30 years, global temperatures have risen rapidly and continuously at around 0.2C per decade, bringing the global mean temperature to what is probably at or near the warmest level reached in the current interglacial period, which began around 12,000 years ago.8 All of the ten warmest years on record have occurred since 1990. The first signs of changes can be seen in many physical and biological systems, for example many species have been moving poleward by 6 km on average each decade for the past 30 40 years. Another sign is changing seasonal events, such as flowering and egg laying, which have been occurring 2 3 days earlier each decade in many Northern Hemisphere temperate regions.9 The IPCC concluded in 2001 that there is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over at least the past 50 years is attributable to human activities.10 Their confidence is based on several decades of active debate and effort to scrutinise the detail of the evidence and to investigate a broad range of hypotheses. Over the past few decades, there has been considerable debate over whether the trend in global mean temperatures can be attributed to human activities. Attributing trends to a single influence is difficult to establish unequivocally because the climate system can often respond in unexpected ways to external influences and has a strong natural variability. For example, Box 1.1 briefly describes the debate over whether the observed increase in temperatures over the last century is beyond that expected from natural variability alone throughout the last Millennium. Much of the debate over the attribution of climate change has now been settled as new evidence has emerged to reconcile outstanding issues. It is now clear that,

while natural factors, such as changes in solar intensity and volcanic eruptions, can explain much of the trend in global temperatures in the early nineteenth century, the rising levels of greenhouse gases provide the only plausible explanation for the observed trend for at least the past 50 years. Over this period, the sustained globally
averaged warming contrasts strongly with the slight cooling expected from natural factors alone. Recent modelling by the Hadley Centre and other research institutes supports this. These models show that the observed trends in temperatures at the surface and in the oceans12, as well as the spatial distribution of warming 13, cannot be replicated without the inclusion of both human and natural effects. Taking into account the rising levels of aerosols, which cool the atmosphere, 14 and the observed heat uptake by the oceans, the calculated warming effect of greenhouse gases is more than enough to explain the observed temperature rise.

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A2 squo= warming
C02 is being reduced in the status quo Parsons and Muscal, 7/9 (Chris Parsons and Michael Muskal, both are writers for the LA times 7/9/09 http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-obama-climate10-2009jul10,0,4042682.story)
President Obama praised efforts by industrialized and developing nations to set guidelines in the battle to control climate change and said today that the United States will increase its role in that fight. Speaking from Italy, where officials from 17 nations met and set the new targets, Obama warned that further steps would be needed and cautioned against those who would dismiss today's announced agreement, which fell short of what some environmentalists had hoped for but was a significant step from the policies of the Bush administration. We've made a good start, but I am the first one to acknowledge that on this issue it will not be easy," Obama said. "I think one of the things we will have to do is fight the temptation toward cynicism, to feel that the problem is so immense that somehow we cannot make significant strides. "It is no small task for 17 leaders to bridge their differences on an issue like climate change," Obama said. The president spoke at the news conference after the forum that included key industrialized countries and developing economies such as Australia, India, China and South Korea. The countries represent more than three-quarters of emissions blamed for raising the world's temperature. The group agreed to prevent the Earth's climate from rising by 2 degrees Celsius (about 3.6 degree Fahrenheit). That will entail a sharp cut in emissions by 2050, about 80% for industrialized nations and 50% for the developing world. "Developed countries like my own have a historic responsibility to take the lead," Obama said. "We have

the much larger carbon footprint per capita, and I know that sometimes the U.S. has fallen short of meeting our responsibilities." "Those days are over," Obama said. "We don't expect to solve this problem in one meeting or in one
summit," Obama said, adding that he believed some progress had been made. "Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time," read the official statement by the 17 nations. "As leaders of the world's major economies, both developed and developing, we intend to respond vigorously to this challenge, being convinced that climate change poses a clear danger requiring an extraordinary global response." Among other things, the leaders agreed to establish a global carbon capture institute, charged with spurring largescale research programs around the world. Australia Prime Minister Kevin Rudd predicted the initiative, to be based in his country, will speed the development of technology critical for reducing carbon emissions. In his comments after the meeting, Rudd said he welcomed the return of U.S. leadership on the climate front. Several nations also agreed to take the lead on particular technologies, including solar energy and advanced vehicles. The fact that developing nations balked at the plan reflects in part their contending political and economic needs, Obama suggested. "Each of our nations comes to the table with different needs," said Obama. They want to make sure they don't have to sacrifice prosperity for progress on climate change, he said. The progress

of the president's climate bill through Congress made it easier for Obama to push other nations on the climatechange measures, White House officials said. "It strengthens our hand in those negotiations," press secretary Robert Gibbs said.
The vote demonstrates "for the first time in many, many years our country's grave concern, shared by others in Europe . . . and how important that is to driving consensus." "We all have some skin in this game," said Gibbs.

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A2 warming slow
Warming triggers feedbacks- the brink is now Slocum, 08
(Nic Slocum. Global warming how seriously do we take it? http://www.southernstar.ie/article.php?id=814) Firstly, he draws on the differences in the predictions of the outcome of global warming between organisations such as the IPCC and the more alarming assessments of the Stern Report, the Al Gore film entitled An Inconvenient Truth and now latterly, Leonardo DiCaprios film The 11th Hour. It is inevitable that predictions on the severity of the outcome will vary, as climate change models are not perfect and are based on existing, limited global warming data and scientific interpretations of what has driven past global warming and cooling events. With little exception, however, current climate change models, taking account of the compelling evidence, indicate radical alterations to the global climate that will have varying degrees of significance for humankind unless we take action now, not tomorrow, but now to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases we release into the atmosphere. Detailed scientific studies on sedimentary deposits and ice sheets indicate that past

periods of global warming and cooling have been influenced by other events that have caused temperature variations to gain momentum through a series of feedbacks. These feedback mechanisms have driven larger changes than might have been expected. The degree of feedback likely to influence current global warming patterns and the severity of the impact are difficult to foretell, as they are predictions. However, a good example may be coming to light in a vast area of sub arctic western Siberian permafrost part of the worlds largest frozen peat bog. This permafrost, the size of France and Germany combined, is beginning to melt. As it melts it will release billions of tonnes of trapped methane, a greenhouse gas having greater impact than carbon dioxide. This in turn will fuel the warming effect, further accelerating the melting of remaining ice caps and frozen peat bogs, releasing yet further gases through an accelerating, uncontrollable feedback. Climate change predictions that take account of all possible feedback mechanisms demonstrate we may be close to a tipping point where global warming feedbacks will trigger an unmanageable rise in global warming over the next few decades. The International Climate Change Taskforce spells out the temperature rises
above which they believe we would be irretrievably committed to runaway global warming and the associated disastrous effects on agriculture, ecosystems, fisheries and ultimately, human well-being.

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Impact- extinction (laundry list)

Warming expands on itself and risk extinction

Brown, 08
[Lester E. Brown, Director and Founder of the global institute of Environment in the U.S Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization]

Beyond what is already happening, the world faces a risk that some of the feedback mechanisms will begin to kick in, further accelerating the warming process. Scientists who once thought that the Arctic Ocean could be free of ice during the summer by 2100 now see it occurring by 2030. Even this could turn out to be a conservative estimate.78 This is of particular concern to scientists because of the albedo effect, where the replacement of highly reflective sea ice with darker open water greatly increases heat absorbed from sunlight. This, of course, has the potential to further accelerate the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. A second feedback loop of concern is the melting of permafrost. This would release billions of tons of carbon, some as methane, a potent greenhouse gas with a global warming effect per ton 25 times that of carbon dioxide.79 The risk facing humanity is that climate change could spiral out of control and it will no longer be possible to arrest trends such as ice melting and rising sea level. At this point, the future of civilization would be at risk. This combination of melting glaciers, rising seas, and their effects on food security and low-lying coastal cities could overwhelm the capacity of governments to cope. Today it is largely weak states that begin to deteriorate under the pressures of mounting environmental stresses. But the changes just described could overwhelm even the strongest of states. Civilization itself could begin to unravel under these extreme stresses.

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Impact- biod
a. Warming kills bio-d Butler, 07
(Rhett. Butler Economist, 3/26/07 http://www.mongabay.com/about.htm. March 26) Using a variety of climate scenarios, assumptions and methods of analysis, we estimated that somewhere between 5% and 50% of the species we analyzed are at risk of extinction, with the central range of estimates falling between 15% and 37%. This is on the basis of warming projected until 2050, so the year 2100 risks of extinction from climate change are likely to lie in the upper half of this range (or above)," he explained. "Our estimates of potential extinction were preliminary values intended to define the order of magnitude of the problem. We found that the extinction risks from climate change are probably similar to those from habitat loss, and conceivably even greater in some regions." Dr. Thomas cautions that not all the species "committed to extinction" will disappear by 2050 due to the inherent lag time of extinction."When the climate becomes unsuitable for the long-term survival of a species, it does not mean that it will die out immediately. For species with long-lived individuals, in particular, it may be many decades or even centuries before the last individuals die out. So, these are the numbers of species that may be declining towards extinction from 2050 onwards, not the numbers that will have died out by that date. "How does climate change affect biodiversity?

Climate change can affect species in myriad ways including the expansion, contraction, and "migration" of habitat; increased incidence of disease and invasive species; changes in temperature, precipitation, and other environmental conditions; shifts in food availability; and failure of ecological relationships with other species -for example the loss of critical pollinators or mutualistic nutrient fixers. In the past some species may have escaped extinction by "migrating" north or southward in response to climate change. Today humans have made it a lot tougher by fragmenting, converting, and destroying habitats and potential migration corridors. Peter Raven, director of the Missouri Botanical Garden and a renowned expert on biodiversity, says that climate change will also make conservation efforts more difficult." As the

climate changes, protected areas will not be able to shift due to surrounding urban areas and agricultural zones," he told mongabay.com via telephone. "This makes them all the more susceptible to the impact of climate change, whether it is rising sea levels, a dip in precipitation levels, or warmer temperatures." b. Loss of biodiversity risks extinction Diner, 94 The Judge Advocate General, Vice Chief of Staff, United States Department of the Army Personnel, Plans and Training Office Chief, the -1994 , Colonel David N., United States Army Military Law Review Winter, p. lexis) By causing widespread extinctions, humans have artificially simplified many ecosystems. As biologic simplicity increases, so does the risk of ecosystem failure. The spreading Sahara Desert in Africa, and the dustbowl conditions of the 1930s in the United States are relatively mild examples of what might be expected if this trend continues. Theoretically, each new animal or plant extinction, with all its dimly perceived and intertwined affects, could cause total ecosystem collapse and human extinction. Each new extinction increases the risk of disaster. Like a mechanic removing, one by one, the rivets from an aircraft's wings, n80 mankind may be edging closer to the abyss.

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Warming o/w nuc war

Climate change is the only scenario for extinction The New York End Times 2006 [The New York End Times is a non-partisan, non-religious, non-ideological, free news filter. We monitor world trends and events as they pertain to two vital threats - war and extinction. We use a proprietary methodology to quantify movements between the extremes of war and peace, harmony and extinction. http://newyorkendtimes.com/extinctionscale.asp] We rate Global Climate Change as a greater threat for human extinction in this century. Most scientists forecast disruptions and dislocations, if current trends persist. The extinction danger is more likely if we alter an environmental process that causes harmful effects and leads to conditions that make the planet uninhabitable to humans. Considering that there is so much that is unknown about global systems, we consider climate change to be the greatest danger to human extinction. However, there is no evidence of imminent danger. Nuclear war at some point in this century might happen. It is unlikely to cause human extinction though. While several countries have nuclear weapons, there are few with the firepower to annihilate the world. For those nations it would be suicidal to exercise that option. The pattern is that the more destructive technology a nation has, the more it tends towards rational behavior. Sophisticated precision weapons then become better tactical options. The bigger danger comes from nuclear
weapons in the hands of terrorists with the help of a rogue state, such as North Korea. The size of such an explosion would not be sufficient to threaten humanity as a whole. Instead it could

. Under this scenario human extinction would only be possible if other threats were present, such as disease and climate change. We monitor war separately. However we also need to incorporate the dangers here .
trigger a major war or even world war

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Turns case- econ

Global warming will devastate the global economy Washington Post, 06
(Washington Post, It is the newspaper with the largest circulation in Washington, D.C. and is the city's oldest paper,, 2006. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/30/AR2006103000269.html)

Failing to curb the impact of climate change could damage the global economy on the scale of the Great Depression or the world wars by spawning environmental devastation that could cost 5 to 20 percent of the world's annual gross domestic product, according to a report issued yesterday by the British government. The report by
Nicholas Stern, who heads Britain's Government Economic Service and formerly served as the World Bank's chief economist, calls for a new round of international collaboration to cut greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming. "There's still time to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, if we act now and act internationally," Stern said in a statement. "But the task is urgent. Delaying action, even by a decade or two, will take us into dangerous territory. We must not let this window of opportunity close."

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Turns case- disease (general)

Warming Increases Infectious Diseases Bernstein, 07
(PhD Chemical Engineering @ Purdue and President of the CMC, 2007 Lenny, IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, http://www.scribd.com/doc/14599333/Climate-Change-2007Synthesis-Report More Authors on Draft Team, CBato)

The health status of millions of people is projected to be affected through, for example, increases in malnutrition; increased deaths, diseases and injury due to extreme weather events; increased burden of diarrhoeal diseases; increased frequency of cardio-respiratory diseases due to higher concentrations of groundlevel ozone in urban areas related to climate change; and the altered spatial distribution of some infectious diseases. {WGI 7.4, Box 7.4; WGII 8.ES, 8.2, 8.4, SPM} _ Climate change is projected to bring some benefits in temperate areas,
such as fewer deaths from cold exposure, and some mixed effects such as changes in range and transmission potential of malaria in Africa. Overall it is expected that benefits will be outweighed by the negative health effects of rising temperatures, especially in developing countries. {WGII 8.4, 8.7, 8ES, SPM} _ Critically important will be factors that directly shape the health of populations such as education, health care, public health initiatives, and infrastructure and economic development. {WGII 8.3, SPM

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Turns case- disease (aids)

Global warming causes aids and makes the impacts worse Age News, 2008 (April 29. Global warming set to fan the HIV fire. http://news.theage.com.au/national/global-warming-set-to-fan-the-hiv-fire-20080430-29eh.html) Climate change is the latest threat to the world's growing HIV epidemic, say Australian experts who warn of the "grim"
outlook in the fight against the infectious disease. A leading professor of health and human rights, Daniel Tarantola, has cautioned that global warming will indirectly make citizens of developing countries even more vulnerable to death and severe ill health from HIV/AIDS. "It was clear soon after the emergence of the HIV epidemic that discrimination, gender inequality and lack of access to essential services have made some populations more vulnerable than others," said Prof Tarantola, of the University of NSW. Those problems had not gone away, he said, and extra threats were lurking on the horizon "as the global economic situation deteriorates, food scarcity worsens and climate change begins to affect those who were already

dependent on survival economies". "Climate change will trigger a chain of events which is likely to increase the stress on society and result in higher vulnerability to diseases including HIV," said Prof Tarantola, due to address
an HIV forum in Sydney. Prominent HIV scientist Professor David Cooper, director of the National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research, agreed environmental change would have a negative impact on HIV sufferers. "Climate change will lead to food scarcity and poorer nutrition, putting people with perilous immune systems at more risk of dying of HIV, as well as contracting and transmitting new and unusual infections," Prof Cooper said.

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Turns case- disease (malaria)

Just a small increase in temperature puts 60 million at risk for malaria Stern, 07
(Former Head Economist for the World Bank, I.G. Patel Chair at the London School of Economics and Political Science, The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review, The report of a team commissioned by the British Government to study the economics of climate change led by Siobhan Peters, Head of G8 and International Climate Change Policy Unit, Cambridge University Press, p. 100) Despite some beneficial effects in colder regions, climate change is expected to worsen health outcomes substantially. Climate change will alter the distribution and incidence of climate-related health impacts, ranging from a reduction in cold- related deaths to greater mortality and illness associated with heat stress, droughts and floods. Equally the geographic incidence of illnesses such as malaria will change. As noted in Chapter 3, if there is no change in malaria control efforts, an additional 40 to 60 million people in Africa could be exposed to malaria with a 2C rise in temperature, increasing to 70 to 80 million at 3 - 4C.35 Though some regions such as parts of West Africa may experience a reduction in exposure to vector borne diseases (see Chapter 3), previously unaffected regions may not have appropriate health systems to cope with and control malaria outbreaks. For poor people in slums, a greater prevalence of malaria or cholera may lead to higher mortality rates given poor sanitation and water quality, as well as malnutrition. In Delhi, for example, gastroenteritis cases increased by 25% during a recent heat wave as slum dwellers had to drink contaminated water.36

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Turns case- food prices

Global warming ensures large spikes in food prices Adams, 08 (Mike Adams, a natural health researcher and author April 23. http://www.naturalnews.com/023091.html) So, to repeat, the food bubble is now starting to implode. What does it all mean? It means that as these economic and climate realities unfold, our world is facing massive starvation and food shortages. The first place this will be felt is in poor developing nations. It is there that people live on the edge of economic livelihood, where even a 20% rise in the price of basic food staples can put desperately-needed calories out of reach of tens of millions of families. If something is not done to rescue these people from their plight, they will starve to death. Wealthy nations like America,
Canada, the U.K., and others will be able to absorb the price increases, so you won't see mass starvation in North America any time soon (unless, of course, all the honeybees die, in which case prepare to start chewing your shoelaces...), but it will lead to significant increases in the cost of living, annoying consumers and reducing the amount of money available for other purchases (like vacations, cars, fuel, etc.). That, of course, will put downward pressure on the national economy. But what we're seeing right now, folks, is just a small foreshadowing of events to come in the next couple of decades. Think about it: If these minor

climate changes and foolish biofuels policies are already unleashing

alarming rises in food prices, just imagine what we'll see when Peak Oil kicks in and global oil supplies really start to dwindle. When gasoline is $10 a gallon in the U.S.,
how expensive will food be around the world? The answer, of course, is that it will be triple or quadruple the current price. And that means many more people will starve. Fossil fuels, of course, aren't the only limiting factor threatening future food supplies on our planet: There's also fossil water. That's water from underground aquifers that's being pumped up to the surface to water crops, then it's lost to evaporation. Countries like India and China are depending heavily on fossil water to irrigate their crops, and not surprisingly, the water levels in those aquifers is dropping steadily. In a few more years (as little as five years in some cases), that water will simply run dry, and the crops that were once irrigated to feed a nation will dry up and turn to dust. Mass starvation will only take a few months to kick in. Think North Korea after a season of floods. Perhaps

95% of humanity is just one crop season away

from mass starvation. The carrying capacity of planet Earth has reached its apex The truth about all this, folks, is that the resources on our planet can only support a limited
population, and I think we've over-populated the planet to a point where we're wiping out non-renewable resources at an alarming rate. This means a population correction is due. When there are too many people consuming too much food, using up too much water and burning too much oil, you can get away with a rapid expansion for a little while (a few decades, perhaps), but eventually reality kicks in and there's a global population correction that brings the population size back down to levels that can be sustained on the planet. It's not a pretty picture. We're talking about the loss of a billion human lives, perhaps more. This is what's coming. It's as predictable as the laws of gravity. When you over-populate a planet and use up all the resources, the population eventually finds itself in a resource panic, and mass death ensues. You can observe the same thing with colonies of bacteria on a nutrient-rich petri dish: They will expand at an accelerating rate, multiplying their numbers until there's no more food left in the petri dish, and then they will experience a massive die-off. You might say that human beings are smarter than bacteria, and that's true, but as current events are clearly demonstrating, they're not much wiser! They still doom themselves to the same stupid fate by refusing to look at the long-term implications of their actions.

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Turns case- Environmental Justice

Warming is environmentally injust- its caused by the wealthy and mostly effects the poor Stern, 07 (Nicholas Stern- Former Head Economist for the World Bank, I.G. Patel Chair at the London School of Economics and Political Science, The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review, p. 29) The incremental impact of a tonne of GHG is independent of where in the world it is emitted. But the volume of GHGs emitted globally is not uniform. Historically, rich countries have produced the majority of GHG emissions. Though all countries are affected by climate change, they are affected in different ways and to different extents. Developing countries will be particularly badly hit, for three reasons: their geography; their stronger dependence on agriculture; and because with their fewer resources comes greater vulnerability. There is therefore a double inequity in climate change: the rich countries have special responsibility for where the world is now, and thus for the consequences which flow from this difficult starting point, whereas poor countries will be particularly badly hit.

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