Ten years ago, 189 nations united behind eight ambitious development goals for 2015, known as the Millennium Development Goals. Despite financial crises and natural disasters, we have made dramatic advances toward targets such as halving global poverty and achieving universal primary education.
Even as we race to achieve these targets by 2015, we must take urgent steps to ensure that our achievements remain sustainable long after. That means factoring climate change into our long-term development strategies.
Here's why: On a range of crosscutting issues from global hunger to global health, changing global temperatures and weather patterns will inject a new element of chaos into the already-fragile existences of the world's poorest people. Among the predictions are more famine and drought, expanding epidemics, more natural disasters, more resource scarcity and significant human displacement. Ominously, the poorest and least equipped to respond are likely to be among the hardest hit.
It's next to impossible to attribute any single natural disaster or weather event entirely to climate change. But the pattern of recent events provides insights into the challenges we will face in a warming world. We may not know if flooding in Pakistan was worsened by climate change, but the best scientists tell us that climate change will bring more flooding and extreme weather events. We don't know the precise role that competition over water played in intensifying conflict in Darfur, but we do know that climate change is projected to alter freshwater flows around the world.
To understand the stakes, consider the progress -- however mixed -- we have already made toward meeting two of our Millennium Development Goals for 2015. Then consider the likely impact of unchecked climate change over the next few decades.
First, let's think about infectious diseases like malaria. This ancient scourge kills approximately three quarters of a million children under five a year. But the world is making progress: Thanks to bed nets, insecticides and improved access to medications, one third of the countries confronting malaria have seen the number of cases drop by at least half since 2000. Unfortunately, as mosquitoes expand their range due to climate change, malaria is now reappearing in areas where it was once eliminated, like the Kenyan highlands. Nor is malaria the only climate-affected health challenge. Changing weather patterns also spread disease by counteracting efforts to provide adequate sanitation for the 2.6 billion people currently lacking it -- another reason why The Lancet has warned that "climate change could be the biggest global health threat of the 21st century."
Second, while progress in the fight against global hunger has been more uneven, the Obama administration has made unprecedented new investments in food security. In 2009, the ranks of the world's hungry actually declined for the first time in fifteen years. But Pakistan's floods and Russia's wildfires show how dramatic weather events -- which climate change will likely increase -- threaten global food availability and prices. As climate change alters weather patterns and increases droughts, our crops will suffer.
Clearly, the impacts of climate change threaten the stability of our development strategies. It's time we craft a path forward where our development and climate goals are mutually reinforcing.
I continue to believe that the most effective step we can take to address climate change is to pass strong domestic legislation that limits greenhouse gas pollution and facilitates efforts to achieve a forceful global climate change treaty. Difficult as this is, we must and will continue to pursue these vital long-term goals. But in the meantime, we should also take advantage of near-term opportunities to address climate change and advance our development goals at the same time.
As the world's leaders gather at the UN, the time is right to craft a formal strategy for integrating climate change -- both mitigation and adaptation -- into our development plans going forward. New climate financing to support low-carbon development strategies must be coordinated with similar development investments -- not working at cross purposes. Recipient nations must be active players in developing strategies that meet their needs as well. And we should partner with emerging nations and others to ensure that all with the capacity to contribute are doing so.
A holistic approach to development and climate zeroes in on scientific and technological innovation that addresses our climate and development goals at the same time. For example, if we replace old, dirty cook stoves with affordable, fuel-efficient alternatives, that will reduce deforestation, protect public health and even reduce flooding by strengthening soil.
The Millennium Development Goals remain as good an organizing framework as we have for how to meet the shared and urgent needs of people everywhere.
But we must look beyond 2015. To ensure that our achievements are enduring and sustainable, we must increasingly consider the growing threat of climate change in our development policies.
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The no one knows what the proper temperature argument falls flat when the rate of change is so fast that species are not able to adapt and are in danger of collapse.
The argument about the planetary temperature is not really an argument. It is a point to bring to the fore that we really do not know. There is no denying the fact that the planet has been much warmer, and much colder. The temperature of the planet fluctuates, much as our own does. But with the planetary scope and dynamic nature determining an average as we have with ourselves is difficult.
Further there is ample evidence that the planetary systems are beginning to alter the temperature. But since it is a small number Warmists dismiss such evidence out of hand. But if it is as it appears human efforts to cool the planet, in addition, could easily slide the planet average in the other direction.
Then there is the point that planetary ppm highs for Co2 have been much higher than they are now. Perhaps around 60% higher.
No one is suggesting anything like that. The goal is to manage the pollution from fossil fuels that is adding to planetary warming.
If that is not messing with the planetary temperature what do you call it?
Besides pollution is much lower than it has been since the '70s. There is even evidence that the ozone layer is repairing itself.
Such change has occurred in the past. We survived!
Armageddon? maybe not - that would technically be a strawman, I think - but making progress difficult and global support impossible, very likely. We can do better.
That means there are precious few FACTS but plenty of EVIDENCE. Evidence by its very nature is subject to evaluation.
There is evidence that can be brought down on both sides of the issue. Those that do not support disastrous Global Warming are treated will dismissal and derision and termed deniers. Use of that final term is a complete dismissal of all evidence that does not support warming as a disaster.
But the fact that supporters of warming as a disaster is also denial!
What evidence refutes the science of global warming? Why did you declare its existence without saying what it was?
Tell me, just to get started, which use of fossil fuels would you propose doing without? How do you think such change will effect your life?
Recently saw a population graph that appears to have the same slope as the "hockey stick". Coincidence?
You don't have to do without any of them.
"How do you think such change will effect your life?"
Very little, and a lot less than a global increase in temperatures and low supplies of fresh water.
"Recently saw a population graph that appears to have the same slope as the "hockey stick". Coincidence?"
More people means more use of fossil fuels, but managing the pollution is more desirable and far more easier than population control.
Your ridiculousness betrays your conviction that your argument is based in fact.
Instead of preaching to the choir about the changes that need to be made to save our global environment, how about we first fix US foreign policy and our capitalist/rejectionist politics?
Maybe we could also do something about the facade of a two party system or democracy on the home front as well!
I'm sick of hearing solutions about every problem except the one that's the biggest facing this nation: the corrupt political process.
Are you?
http://www.fixcongressfirst.org/
I is much easier to control our behavior. That is why the attention has been placed on CO2 from burning fossil fuels. It is a major contributor and is completely within our control.