Who pays for the climate disaster?

The weekly round-up on the climate crisis and data on carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

“Loss and Damage” is the term used to describe how climate change is already causing severe and, in many cases, irreversible impacts around the world – particularly in vulnerable communities. As he explains to Carbon Brief the Prof.Saleemul Huq, director of the International Center for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) and pioneer of loss and damage research:

“The term ‘loss and damage’ refers to the impacts of human-induced climate change affecting people around the world.Damages refer to things that can be repaired, such as damaged homes, while losses refer to things that have been completely lost and will not come back, such as human lives.”

“We are losing infrastructure, agricultural land – and we are losing what we can call a hope of having sustainable economic growth and a future for all,” adds Ineza Umuhoza Grace, Rwandan activist and director of the Loss and Damage Youth Coalition (LDYC).

In UN climate talks, the term is used by nations and organizations who argue that developed, high-emitting countries must be held responsible for losses suffered in poorer regions, which are the less responsible of climate change (For this reason, the term "loss and damage" is sometimes described as "climate compensation").

The damage caused by monsoon rains and floods made more intense and violent by the climate crisis in Pakistan they have raised the issues of finance and climate justice even more forcefully in view of the next UN climate conference in Egypt.“Who pays for the climate disaster?”, you ask the climate expert journalist, Somini Sengupta, on New York Times.

Read also >> Climate crisis:over 1000 dead, half a million people homeless, a third of the country underwater.Pakistan hit by monsoon rains

Pakistan leads the so-called Group of 77, a coalition of developing countries at the United Nations, which has long been committed to advancing the issue of climate finance and the price paid by poorer nations suffering the consequences of climate change due to the industrialization of rich nations.

The Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, he recently said that “polluters must pay” for the growing damage caused by heat waves, floods, droughts and other climate impacts, urging states to “tax extra profits from fossil fuel companies and redirect the proceeds to vulnerable nations that suffer increasingly severe losses due to the climate crisis and people struggling with rising food and energy prices.”

The poorest countries most exposed to the effects of climate change are increasingly questioning the very rules of the global financial system that the World Bank represents, underlining how those rules are entangled in a spiral of debt, forcing them to pay for a crisis climate change that they did not cause and which is putting their economies and populations at risk.

According to the International Monetary Fund, 60% of low-income countries are in distressed or at risk of distressed debt, meaning their repayment obligations are so high that they are in some cases forced to renegotiate their payment schedule.

Sengupta mentions in the article on New York Times the case of Antigua and Barbuda.One night in September 2017, a hurricane with wind gusts of up to nearly 300 kilometers per hour devastated the island of Barbuda, whose main source of income is tourism.It was necessary to rebuild everything, roads, houses, hotels, at a cost of around 200 million euros:“Pretty much 100% of our revenue,” Prime Minister Gaston Browne said.

At the time, Browne approached the World Bank for funds to build new roads, but was told that his country was not eligible for a long-term, low-interest loan.The loan conditions offered by the bank were unaffordable, the Prime Minister of Barbuda explained:“When our economies are decimated by hurricanes, we must borrow to recover.This means we don't have many resources for adaptation."

In the era of the climate crisis, Browne adds, the World Bank should change its financing criteria and take into account the vulnerabilities of different countries around the world, their susceptibility to extreme climate conditions and their indebtedness before extreme weather events hit them.

The Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, has called for a series of reforms to the rules of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.He proposed low-interest loans for infrastructure that would help countries be more resilient to climate shocks and called for stopping the extra interest charges that large borrowers must pay if they need additional funds.For Browne, being locked out of low-interest loans means turning to commercial banks and having to pay high interest rates that are even harder to repay.

It remains to be seen whether development banks and donor countries will accept new financing criteria and what decisions will be made starting from the next COP in Egypt.“We must reform a morally bankrupt global financial system,” he said Guterres.“This system was created by rich countries to benefit rich countries."

The issue was also raised by hundreds of activists from African and Middle Eastern countries gathered in Tunisia to discuss climate finance and compensation for damages by the countries most responsible for global warming:the collective fight for climate justice which – the activists said – will lead to the next COP.“Our goal is to rise from the ashes to demonstrate that we are not just victims, but a force to be reckoned with.All we need to do is overcome our small differences and find unity of purpose to stop the exploitation of the resources of the Global South, including fossil oil and gas, by richer nations and push instead for real solutions that provide accessible and affordable energy to the millions of people who are energy poor,” he stated Omar Elmawi, 34, a climate activist from Kenya, coordinator of a campaign to stop the world's longest heated crude oil pipeline in East Africa.

Meanwhile, according to the draft of a negotiation plan viewed from Political, the European Union does not seem willing to support developing countries' requests for the creation of a new fund during COP27.In the document, which will see its final version on 4 November, it currently emphasizes greater action by the EU in response to the damage caused by climate change in the poorest countries, without however making any mention of the requests of the most vulnerable states.

The British site Carbon Brief he made one timeline which shows the evolution of claims by developing countries for “loss and damage” caused by climate change since the 1990s.Since the beginning of climate negotiations, large incumbent emitters have been unwilling to shoulder the financial burden of climate change.Only in 2007, when there began to be greater awareness of the effects of climate change, did "loss and damage" begin to be spoken of in a formal text at United Nations conferences.But so far the demands of the most vulnerable countries – money for loss and damage – have not been met.

Because Hurricane Ian was so powerful and may be representative of the future that awaits us

At least 85 dead, thousands of homes destroyed, bridges, motorways and other communication routes interrupted, millions of people without electricity, devastating floods.Hurricane Ian that hit Florida, North Carolina and Cuba it probably was one of the most devastating and intense ever.

Just before making landfall over southwest Florida, the storm it took energy from the particularly warm ocean waters, only to be hit by impetuous winds, incessant rains and devastating floods.The hurricane - classified as just under a Category 5 storm, the highest level - doubled its speed in less than 48 hours, reaching 155 miles per hour.Once it moved inland, Ian lost strength and was downgraded to a tropical storm, but then intensified and became a hurricane again as it crossed the warm Atlantic toward South Carolina.Storms usually weaken when they move over land, but Hurricane Ian was able to draw a lot of energy from the ocean over the course of its path, which supported it for longer.How was this possible?How could it escalate so quickly and maintain this strength?

Behind events of this type there is a mix of three factors, explains to Vox Paul Miller, professor of Oceanography at Louisiana State University:the humid air, low wind shear (or wind gradient, an atmospheric phenomenon that consists of a sudden variation of the wind in intensity and direction) and the high temperatures of the ocean waters.Ian had them all.

As it developed, the storm system faced some disruptive winds, but there was little during its growth shear.Furthermore, the hurricane on its path avoided an area of ​​dry air in the Gulf of Mexico that could have mitigated it.Added to this were ocean temperatures, which were increasingly warmer due to global warming, and also because before Ian there had been no other hurricanes that cooled the Gulf.“The Gulf of Mexico was pristine from a sea surface temperature perspective, and Hurricane Ian was able to take advantage of that,” Miller explains.

It's possible that climate change is also playing a role by warming the oceans and creating the conditions for storms like Ian.Climate change is making storms wetter, as warmer air allows hurricanes to absorb more ocean water.And it often slows the path of storms, allowing a hurricane to dump massive amounts of rain on a region over a longer period of time, increasing the risks associated with flooding.Ian's first attribution study, published this week, also found that climate change infused the hurricane with 10% more rain.The Sarasota area received more than 13 inches of rain in just six hours.

Plus, according to a recent analysis of hurricane data conducted by Associated Press, there have been about 25% more rapidly intensifying storms in the Atlantic Ocean and eastern Pacific over the past 10 years than there were 40 years ago.Some scientific studies, in past years, they demonstrated that hurricanes are intensifying more rapidly in some areas of the Atlantic. “But it is good to remember that intensification is a complicated process and other factors that influence these events (wind shear and air humidity) are not clearly linked to climate change,” notes Miller.

What is certain is that intense events of this type have been rapidly increasing in recent years.And with them the damage bill. According to NOAA calculations, billion-dollar disasters are on the rise in the United States.In 2021, the agency counted 20, totaling $152.6 billion in damages.2021 was also the third costliest year in U.S. history for damage from extreme weather events, after 2017 (the year of Harvey, with $366 billion in damage) and 2005 (the year of Katrina, with almost $366 billion in damage). 249 billion dollars).

Recovering from Ian will be especially difficult for those who have not insured their properties through the federal flood insurance program.In counties where evacuation orders were given, fewer than 20% of homeowners had done so.Once a labyrinth of swamps and subject to frequent flooding, the coast of southeastern Florida is now among the fastest growing areas in the United States, inhabited by more than 2 million people, writes Grist.The real estate boom in this area contributed to the damage done by the hurricane.“The main function of these regions is to protect internal areas from phenomena such as storm surges.You build on it, replace it with subdivisions and houses.What were we waiting to see?”, comments Stephen Strader, associate professor of disaster sociology at Villanova University.“Real estate developers have not only eliminated wetlands, but have pushed right down to the seashore, leaving little space between homes and the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.With rising sea levels and increasingly frequent storms, the era of constant flooding has begun again, this time with millions more people.”

He was an exception Babcock Ranch, about 20 kilometers northeast of Fort Myers, one of the most devastated locations.In recent years Babcock Ranch has tried to adapt to climate change, building roads designed to prevent homes from flooding, with native plants along the roadside that help control stormwater, and burying power lines to prevent wind damage , respecting Florida's strict building codes and creating a solar system of 700 thousand individual panels capable of generating more electricity than the center of approximately 2 thousand homes consumes, in a state where most of the electricity is generated by the combustion of natural gas, a fossil fuel that warms the planet.When Hurricane Ian hit, Babcock Ranch withstood the impact and even avoided the blackout.The storm uprooted trees and ripped tiles from roofs, but other than that there was no serious damage.

The Babcock Ranch example tells us that updated building codes can help make homes less prone to collapse.Rebuilding coastal communities will require local politicians and urban planners to find a balance between investments in so-called gray infrastructure - such as seawalls, seawalls, floodgates and sea walls - and green defenses such as wetlands, oyster reefs and forests of mangroves.In rebuilding New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, writes The New York Times, the city has improved infrastructure, spending $14.5 billion to upgrade older levees and build a system of flood gates and barriers.When Hurricane Ida hit Louisiana in 2021, these flood protections seemed to work.

How to fight global warming without exacerbating social inequalities

Last week has been published on Nature Sustainability a study by Lucas Chancel, an economist expert in the study of inequalities in the environmental field, co-director of the World Inequality Lab at the Paris School of Economics, on how global emissions have changed in 30 years, from 1990 to 2019, and who was responsible for this increase.The study shows a graph that shows how the richest 1% of the world's population alone was responsible for 23% of all emissions, while the poorest 50% were responsible for 16%.These emissions, among other things, have contributed to lifting billions of people out of poverty (according to the World Bank, the percentage of the population in conditions of extreme poverty went from 36% in 1990 to 10% in 2015).

 

Over the years, the study explains, the balance between rich and poor has further changed (in 2019 the richest 10% contributed to 48% of global emissions, the poorest 50% to 12%) and with it global inequality in individual emissions, no longer between rich and poor countries, but between rich and poor social classes within individual states.The only segment of the population that has so far been able to reduce its emissions has been the class with middle and low incomes in rich countries, while the emissions of the highest class have doubled.

How can we prevent those who cannot afford it from paying for decarbonisation policies and those who, despite not having great economic means, already contribute to reducing emissions?The study proposes the introduction of progressive carbon tax systems.One option could be to combine carbon pricing with cash transfers for some categories of the population.Or carbon tax rates could be increased based on emissions levels.This could be achieved through a combination of fiscal tools, focusing on consumers and investors in carbon-intensive activities.

European energy ministers have reached an agreement to tax extra profits on gas

Waiting for the meeting between the heads of government of the 27 EU countries on 6 and 7 October in Prague to discuss the war in Ukraine, the energy crisis and the economic situation, the European energy ministers they reached an agreement on a 140 billion euro plan to combat the energy crisis and the high bills that are affecting European citizens.The plan calls for the introduction of taxes that limit the revenues of most electricity producers that do not use gas, such as nuclear and renewables, the recovery of some profits of oil and gas companies and the reduction of consumption of electricity during the winter.This agreement comes a few days after the leaks of the Nord Stream gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea, the causes of which the hypothesis of sabotage is increasingly gaining ground.

In detail, the plan predicts:

1. Reduction in electricity demand:voluntary of 10% of gross consumption and mandatory of 5% during peak hours.
2. Market revenue cap at 180 euros/MWh for electricity generators from renewable, nuclear and lignite sources, including intermediaries.Member States agreed to use measures of their choice to collect and redirect revenues to consumers.
3. Solidarity contribution regarding the fossil fuel sector.Member States agreed to set a mandatory temporary solidarity contribution on the profits of companies active in the crude oil, natural gas, coal and refinery sectors.
4. Retail measures for SMEs.Member States may temporarily set a price for the supply of electricity to small and medium-sized enterprises to further support SMEs struggling with high energy prices.

Distances remain between different states on the cap on wholesale natural gas prices for consumers and businesses.In particular, it is Germany that opposes the introduction of this measure for which Italy, France, Spain and a dozen other countries are instead pushing, writes Wall Street Journal.Germany recently presented support measures costing up to 200 billion euros to protect German citizens from soaring energy prices.A decision that irritated the Italian government:Going it alone damages the unity of Europe and hinders the ability of EU member states to respond to the crisis, is the summary of the thoughts of the outgoing Prime Minister Mario Draghi.Last week the European Commission rejected a request from 15 EU countries to cap wholesale gas prices because it "could lead to shortages if suppliers decide to send natural gas elsewhere" and put the EU in the onerous task to "decide where to flow the gas within the block, eliminating price differentials that encourage companies to transfer fuel to countries where it is in short supply".

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