Tag: Environment and Climate

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The Earth Transformed

An Untold History

Peter Frankopan | 2023

A most anticipated book of the year, a revolutionary new history that reveals how climate change has dramatically shaped the development and demise of civilisations.

Global warming is one of the greatest dangers mankind faces today. Even as temperatures increase, sea levels rise, and natural disasters escalate, our current environmental crisis feels challenging to predict and understand. But climate change and its effects on us are not new.

In a bold narrative that spans centuries and continents, Peter Frankopan argues that nature has always played a fundamental role in writing history. From the fall of the Moche civilization in South America that came about because of the cyclical pressures of El Niño to volcanic eruptions in Iceland that affected Egypt and helped bring the Ottoman empire to its knees, climate change and its influences have always been with us.

Frankopan explains how the Vikings emerged thanks to catastrophic crop failure, why the roots of regime change in eleventh-century Baghdad lay in the collapse of cotton prices resulting from unusual climate patterns, and why the western expansion of the frontiers in North America was directly affected by solar flare activity in the eighteenth century.

Again and again, Frankopan shows that when past empires have failed to act sustainably, they have been met with catastrophe. Blending brilliant historical writing and cutting-edge scientific research, The Earth Transformed will radically reframe how we view the world and our future.

Bibliography

Frankopan, P. (2023) The Earth Transformed: An Untold History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf

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Energietransitie en omgang met onzekerheid

Dit artikel is tot stand gekomen in opdracht van en samenspraak met Frank Janse (BNG Bank) en Jack Kruf (PRIMO & UDITE)

Prof. Dr. Bastiaan Zoeteman[1] | 2018

De denktank ‘From Global to Local’[2] te Den Haag op 20 april 2018 is erop gericht de inventiviteit te verbeteren van lokale gemeenschappen in het omgaan met op hogere schaalniveaus spelende onzekerheden met veel impact. Daartoe worden uitkomsten van relevante onderzoeken verbonden met het risicomanagement rond de uitdagingen die deze onzekerheden oproepen voor het regionale en lokale bestuur.

Dergelijke onzekerheden worden niet alleen door rampen en crises opgeroepen maar ook door al dan niet terechte verwachtingen over het handelen van de overheden bij dergelijke situaties en over het te verwachten verloop van gebeurtenissen in de toekomst.

Door het zichtbaar maken van zulke onzekerheden in combinatie met een thema, in dit geval het thema van de energietransitie ter voorkoming van verdergaande klimaatverandering, wordt het mogelijk om gerichte handelingsperspectieven te ontwerpen die uitvoerbaar zijn en het vertrouwen in de overheid ondersteunen. Lees verder “Energietransitie en omgang met onzekerheid”

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City typology as the basis for policy

Towards a tailor-made approach to the benchmarking and monitoring of the energy and climate policy of cities

KPMG | 2010

The whole world is facing a significant challenge of how to limit the effects of climate change. These days, there is little doubt that climate change is an important issue. Therefore, the main question now is how to address it. A noteworthy report with ideas and concepts.

Bernd Hendriksen, Director, Sustainability Advisory practice, KPMG in the Netherlands: “Addressing climate change is a shared responsibility requiring the joint support of citizens, businesses and governments. Cities occupy a crucial position in this respect. They house large populations and many businesses, generating a great deal of mobility, and are, therefore, significant emitters of greenhouse gases.

This also implies that cities have unique opportunities to develop an energy and climate policy to reduce these emissions significantly. To achieve this, cities can mobilise the parties involved, create awareness and enforce specific changes through legislation and regulations. The range of issues to be addressed is virtually endless, from waste collection and industrial policy to car use in the inner cities and grant schemes for green energy.

“Cities are responsible for about eighty per cent of the global energy consumption and half of the total greenhouse gas emissions (European Commission, 20081). Cities are, therefore, one of the key locations in the fight against global warming.”

Moreover, this also presents cities with opportunities: a city that successfully tackles this issue can raise its profile accordingly. In the near future, this will become an increasingly important way for cities to distinguish themselves.

Understandably, cities are already using the opportunities available to place the issue of climate change on a solid footing. Domestically as well as internationally, numerous initiatives and tools have been implemented to measure the efforts, benchmark and share knowledge.

In this publication, KPMG Sustainability analyses and compares the impact of various tools and initiatives. One of our conclusions is that the landscape is cluttered, showing little uniformity or cohesion. We also conclude that initiatives are often not correctly aligned to the specific characteristics of a given city and, therefore, do not invite a tailor-made approach. We have therefore made several suggestions for improvement. These are also based on the awareness that cities, particularly in the coming years, will require tailor-made policies that are designed to achieve optimal and sustainable results cost-effectively.

Furthermore, requirements will become stricter. The Covenant of Mayors (a European Commission initiative for commitment by signatory towns and cities to go beyond the objectives of EU energy policy in terms of reduction in CO2 emissions), for example, is drafting stricter requirements concerning reporting. The European Commission will also keep a close eye on the energy and climate policies of cities.”

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Paris Agreement

United Nations | December 2015

The Paris Agreement is a legally binding international treaty on climate change. It was adopted by 196 Parties at COP 21 in Paris on December 12, 2015, and entered into force on 4 November 2016.

Its goal is to limit global warming to below 2, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels.

To achieve this long-term temperature goal, countries aim to peak global greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible and achieve a climate-neutral world by mid-century.

The Paris Agreement is a landmark in the multilateral climate change process because, for the first time, a binding agreement brings all nations together to undertake ambitious efforts to combat climate change and adapt to its effects.

Download: Paris Agreement 2015

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Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change

HM Treasury UK | 2006

“The scientific evidence is now overwhelming: climate change presents serious global risks and demands an urgent global response. This independent Review was commissioned by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who reports to both the Chancellor and the Prime Minister, to contribute to assessing the evidence and building an understanding of the economics of climate change.

The Review first examines the evidence on the economic impacts of climate change itself and explores the economics of stabilizing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The second half of the Review considers the complex policy challenges involved in managing the transition to a low-carbon economy and in ensuring that societies can adapt to the consequences of climate change that can no longer be avoided.

The Review takes an international perspective. Climate change is global in its causes and consequences, and international collective action will be critical in driving an effective, efficient and equitable response on the scale required. This response will require deeper international cooperation in many areas – most notably in creating price signals and markets for carbon, spurring technology research, development and deployment, and promoting adaptation, particularly for developing countries.

Climate change presents a unique challenge for economics: it is the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen. The economic analysis must therefore be global, deal with long time horizons, have the economics of risk and uncertainty at centre stage, and examine the possibility of major, non-marginal change. To meet these requirements, the Review draws on ideas and techniques from most of the important areas of economics, including many recent advances.

The benefits of strong, early action on climate change outweigh the costs

The effects of our actions now on future changes in the climate have long lead times. What we do now can have only a limited effect on the climate over the next 40 or 50 years. On the other hand what we do in the next 10 or 20 years can have a profound effect on the climate in the second half of this century and in the next.

No-one can predict the consequences of climate change with complete certainty; but we now know enough to understand the risks. Mitigation – taking strong action to reduce emissions – must be viewed as an investment, a cost incurred now and in the coming few decades to avoid the risks of very severe consequences in the future. If these investments are made wisely, the costs will be manageable, and there will be a wide range of opportunities for growth and development along the way. For this to work well, policy must promote sound market signals, overcome market failures and have equity and risk mitigation at its core. That essentially is the conceptual framework of this Review.

The Review considers the economic costs of the impacts of climate change, and the costs and benefits of action to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) that cause it, in three different ways:

  • Using disaggregated techniques, in other words considering the physical
    impacts of climate change on the economy, on human life and on the environment, and examining the resource costs of different technologies and strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
  • Using economic models, including integrated assessment models that estimate the economic impacts of climate change, and macro-economic models that represent the costs and effects of the transition to low-carbon energy systems for the economy as a whole.
  • Using comparisons of the current level and future trajectories of the ‘social cost of carbon’ (the cost of impacts associated with an additional unit of greenhouse gas emissions) with the marginal abatement cost (the costs associated with incremental reductions in units of emissions).

From all of these perspectives, the evidence gathered by the Review leads to a
simple conclusion: the benefits of strong, early action considerably outweigh the costs.

The evidence shows that ignoring climate change will eventually damage economic growth. Our actions over the coming few decades could create risks of major disruption to economic and social activity, later in this century and in the next, on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century. And it will be difficult or impossible to reverse these changes. Tackling climate change is the pro-growth strategy for the longer term, and it can be done in a way that does not cap the aspirations for growth of rich or poor countries. The earlier effective action is taken, the less costly it will be.

At the same time, given that climate change is happening, measures to help people adapt to it are essential. And the less mitigation we do now, the greater the difficulty of continuing to adapt in future.

Download Stern Executive Summary

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An Inconvenient Truth

The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It

Al Gore | 2006

In his best-selling book, An Inconvenient Truth, former Vice President Al Gore argues against the climate crisis and argues that it is imperative that we solve it.

Our climate crisis may, at times, appear to be happening slowly, but it is happening very quickly and has become a true planetary emergency. The Chinese expression for crisis consists of two characters. The first is a symbol of danger; the second is a symbol of opportunity.

Lees verder “An Inconvenient Truth”

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KNMI Klimaatsignaal’ 21

KNMI | Oktober 2021

Een stijgende zeespiegel, een toename van droge lentes en zomers en meer extreme zomerse buien vormen de klimaatrisico’s voor Nederland. Met dit rapport wordt de urgentie van de zich snel voltrekkende klimaatverandering duidelijk.

 

Het KNMI rapporteert hoe het klimaat in Nederland steeds sneller verandert. De nieuwste inzichten over het veranderende Nederlandse klimaat zijn gepubliceerd in het KNMI Klimaatsignaal’21. Het is gebaseerd op het laatste IPCC-rapport – dat in augustus 2021 is verschenen – en eigen onderzoek van het KNMI.

Lees verder “KNMI Klimaatsignaal’ 21”