95 months and counting

Averting climatic catastrophe is still achievable but we might need to learn from the Victorians about applying ourselves

• Andrew Simms

From today, based on the best estimates available, we have eight years to head-off potentially uncontrollable climatic upheaval. What can happen in eight years? Quite a lot, actually. A world war can begin, and end. Two, in fact.

Last month there was a lacklustre meeting on climate change in Poznan, Poland. It was talks about more talks set to come later this year in Copenhagen. But that's all it was, talks. Now, on New Year's Day, hangovers and environmental ennui could prove a lethal combination. But squeeze those eyes open to 2009, and history tells us great things are possible. We are still in control. We just need to build, rapidly, new energy and transport systems and change our behaviour.

Only, we seem to have forgotten what we are capable of.

Victorian engineers would have been aghast at our timidity. Within our 8 year time frame, for example, between 1845 and 1852 there were 4,400 miles of railway track laid in Britain.

Today we desperately need to get people out of their cars and on to cleaner transport. But, after a decade of work and around £9bn spent just to upgrade the west coast mainline, it still didn't work properly when "opened" last month.

Skip back to a weekend in1892. By contemporary standards, engineers began a project of breathtaking ambition on the morning of Saturday May 21, and they finished it by 4am on the following Monday morning, May 23. In just those two days a small, perfectly coordinated army of 4,200 workers, laid a total of 177 miles of track along the Great Western route to the south west, converting the old broad gauge lines to the new standard, or narrow gauge.

As Barack Obama waits in the wings to assume the presidency, he must be acutely conscious of the other great, if short-lived, American new dawn that began in 1961 when John F Kennedy became President.

In the first few months of Kennedy's term of office, he announced his nation's intention to put a man on the moon. As fantastic and, literally, other worldly as that must have seemed at the time, only eight years later, in July 1969, the US achieved its goal. By the time that the moon missions were over in 1973, an estimated $20bn dollars had been spent.

For a meaningful comparison of what that would represent today you need to look at it as a relative share of GDP. That brings the modern equivalent figure to a substantial $200bn. It's big. But considering the iconic nature of the project, the virtually standing start it had, and the speed of accomplishment, it looks rather affordable now, compared with the sums thrown at the banking crisis. And, of course, they could say, "Hey, we put a man on the Moon." With the trillions thrown at the financial crisis it can, at best, be said, "Hey, it could've been worse."

The Apollo programme was money spent for a handful of men to become the only people in history to set foot on another celestial body. Now, what price is it worth paying to preserve for the whole of humanity the conditions under which civilisation emerged? In America they are indeed invoking the Apollo programme as a precedent for the overdue climate-response.

There are inverted, negative examples, too, of our ability to mobilise resources. According to Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz the Iraq war has cost the US around $3tn. The war has been going for just under six years, has made an enormous mess, and is far from over.

An increasing number of voices in the climate change debate are beginning to express despair. Among them are concerned, informed and well-motivated scientists and journalists. Fair enough. Comparing the emerging trends on greenhouse gas emissions with the past track record of achievements in energy conservation, increased efficiency, and the introduction of renewable energy options provides little encouragement.

But that is to look in the wrong place for hope. The beginnings of the great transition are already visible in the 1,000 flowers blooming as green energy projects at the local level. But, the clean energy shift has, until now, been nowhere a political priority on the scale of war or the Apollo programme. Neither has it had the wild ambition that the architects of empire brought to building their new infrastructure. The eight years we now have left is time enough if this kind of boldness and vision can be wrestled towards solving the climate predicament. If we build it, they will come, and the great transition will run on time. Happy New Year.

 

The carbon footprint of Nuclear War

Almost 700m tonnes of CO2 would be released into the Earth's atmosphere by even the smallest nuclear conflict, according to a US study that compares the environmental costs of developing various power sources

Nuclear waste stored at Sellafield. One of the side-effects of developing nuclear power is the risk of war, the report warns. Photograph: AFP
Just when you might have thought it was ethically sound to unleash a nuclear attack on a nearby city, along comes a pesky scientist and points out that atomic warfare is bad for the climate. According to a new paper in the journal Energy & Environmental Science, even a very limited nuclear exchange, using just a thousandth of the weaponry of a full-scale nuclear war, would cause up to 690m tonnes of CO2 to enter the atmosphere – more than UK's annual total.
The upside (kind of) is that the conflict would also generate as much as 313m tonnes of soot. This would stop a great deal of sunlight reaching the earth, creating a significant regional cooling effect in the short and medium terms – just like when a major volcano erupts. Ultimately, though, the CO2 would win out and crank up global temperatures an extra few notches.
The paper's author, Mark Z Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, calculated the emissions of such a conflict by totting up the burn rate and carbon content of the fabric of our cities. "Materials have the following carbon contents: plastics, 38–92%; tyres and other rubbers, 59–91%; synthetic fibres, 63–86%; woody biomass, 41–45%; charcoal, 71%; asphalt, 80%; steel, 0.05–2%. We approximate roughly the carbon content of all combustible material in a city as 40–60%."
But why would a Stanford engineer bother calculating such a thing? Given that the nuclear exchange would also kill up to 17 million people, who's going to be thinking about the impact on global warming?
The purpose of the paper is to compare the total human and environmental costs of a wide range of different power sources, from solar and wind to nuclear and biofuels. One of the side-effects of nuclear power, the report argues, is an increased risk of nuclear war: "Because the production of nuclear weapons material is occurring only in countries that have developed civilian nuclear energy programs, the risk of a limited nuclear exchange between countries or the detonation of a nuclear device by terrorists has increased due to the dissemination of nuclear energy facilities worldwide."
"As such," Jacobson continues, "it is a valid exercise to estimate the potential number of immediate deaths and carbon emissions due to the burning of buildings and infrastructure associated with the proliferation of nuclear energy facilities and the resulting proliferation of nuclear weapons … Although concern at the time of an explosion will be the deaths and not carbon emissions, policy makers today must weigh all the potential future risks of mortality and carbon emissions when comparing energy sources."
I'm not a huge fan of nuclear energy, and I agree that a large roll-out of atomic power must on some level increase the likelihood of nuclear terrorism or war. However, it does strike me as faintly absurd to try and quantify this risk – particularly the way Jacobson does it. Here's how he crunches the numbers:
"If one nuclear exchange as described above occurs over the next 30 years, the net carbon emissions due to nuclear weapons proliferation caused by the expansion of nuclear energy worldwide would be 1.1–4.1g CO2 per kWh, where the energy generation assumed is the annual 2005 generation for nuclear power multiplied by the number of year being considered."
In other words, if nuclear power leads one exchange of fifty 15 kilotonne nuclear devices over 30 years, then that equates to 4.1 grams of extra CO2 for each kilowatt of nuclear energy produced. Why, you might ask, has Jacobson chosen one exchange, 50 nuclear war heads and 30 years? Good question. Those figures, as far as I can tell, are entirely arbitrary, and as such I'm rather surprised that the Royal Society for Chemistry are prepared to publish them in their journal.
Putting those doubts to one side for a moment, it's interesting to note that nuclear looks very bad in the report even if you ignore the warfare component of the carbon footprint. Far more serious (by a factor of 15 to 25) is nuclear's opportunity cost: the emissions savings lost during the decades of planning and building of each nuclear station. Once again, however, there's no explanation about how these figures are calculated, so it's hard to know whether they're valid.
Either way, nuclear doesn't come out as badly as first- or second-generation biofuels. These, the author remarks, are "ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste," and may actually "worsen climate and air pollution" relative to fossil fuels. Carbon capture and storage also gets a thumbs down. By contrast, wind, solar and marine energy score well on the wide-ranging criteria, which include carbon emissions, land demands and even thermal pollution.
As the first study to compare energy sources in so many different ways, the report is both interesting and welcome. Unfortunately, it's unlikely to make much of an impact – not just because there's no mention of the economics of each energy source, but because the half-baked quantification of nuclear war's climate impact makes the whole study seem somewhat unconvincing.

 

 

Nasa climate expert makes personal appeal to Obama

• James Randerson , science correspondent

One of the world's top climate scientists has written a personal new year appeal to Barack and Michelle Obama, warning of the "profound disconnect" between public policy on climate change and the magnitude of the problem.
With less than three weeks to go until Obama's inauguration, Professor James Hansen, who heads Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, asked the recently appointed White House science adviser Professor John Holdren to pass the missive directly to the president-elect.
In it, he praises Obama's campaign rhetoric about "a planet in peril", but says that how the new president acts in office will be crucial. Hansen lambasts the current international approach of setting targets through "cap and trade" schemes as not up to the task. "This approach is ineffectual and not commensurate with the climate threat. It could waste another decade, locking in disastrous consequences for our planet and humanity," the letter from Hansen and his wife, Anniek, reads.
The letter will make uncomfortable reading for officials in 10 US states whose cap and trade mechanism - the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative - got under way yesterday. The scheme is the first mandatory, market-based greenhouse gas reduction programme in the US.
Hansen advocates a three-pronged attack on the climate problem. First, he wants a phasing out of coal-fired power stations - which he calls "factories of death" - that do not incorporate carbon capture. "Nobody realistically expects that the large readily available pools of oil and gas will be left in the ground. Caps will not cause that to happen - caps only slow the rate at which the oil and gas are used. The only solution is to cut off the coal source," the Hansens wrote.
Second, he proposes a "carbon tax and 100% dividend". This is a mechanism for putting a price on carbon without raising money for government coffers. The idea is to tax carbon at source, then redistribute the revenue equally among taxpayers, so that high carbon users are penalised while low carbon users are rewarded.
Finally, he urges a renewed research effort into so-called fourth generation nuclear plants, which can use nuclear waste as fuel.
Hansen argues that the current emphasis on reduction targets combined with carbon trading schemes make it too easy for countries to wriggle out of their commitments. He cites the example of Japan's increasing coal use, which it has offset by buying credits from China through the clean development mechanism - an instrument set up by the Kyoto protocol - yet China's emissions have continued to increase rapidly. China has overtaken the US as the biggest polluter in the world.
Hansen has been one of the most prominent advocates of action to tackle climate change since he first spoke on the issue in the 1980s. His testimony to the Senate featured in Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth and he has received numerous honours for his work on the issue, including the WWF's top conservation award.

Professor's wish list

• Moratorium on and phasing out of coal power stations without carbon capture, what Hansen calls the "sine qua non for solving the climate problem". Coal CO2 emissions are the same as those of other fossil fuels combined.
• Raising the price of emissions via a "carbon tax and 100% dividend". This is a tax mechanism to "decarbonise" the economy without a net take from taxpayers. Low carbon users are rewarded while high users are punished.
• Urgent research on "fourth generation" nuclear power with international co-operation. This offers one of the best options for nearly carbon-free power, according to Hansen. It would also help to solve the nuclear waste problem by using that material as fuel.

 

 

 

Climate Change:

The Carbon Atlas. Seeing is believing...:

 

 

 

 

 

 

The hidden cost of our growing taste for meat

As the west's appetite for meat increases, so too does the demand for soya - used as animal feed by farmers. But the planting of huge tracts of land is causing deforestation and destroying eco-systems in developing countries.

• Juliette Jowit and Oliver Balch

Ranchers, soybean farmers and loggers burned and cut down a near-record area of the Amazon rainforest last year. Photograph: Dado Galdier / AP
To the European eye, accustomed to square hedgerows and neatly tilled arable land, the countryside of eastern Paraguay is unexceptional, almost pretty. The rolling hills spread out to the far distance. The sky is vast, the horizon broken only by the occasional homestead, leafy copse or bulky metal silo.
But to 47-year-old Melitón Ramírez, this is no paradise. It's a wasteland. Juddering down a farm track in a muddy Jeep, he points to a wide field by the road. It has been sown with soya and the green-leafed plants are sprouting. It looks like a huge bed of wild clover.
'Thirty years ago, almost all of this was woodland,' says Ramírez, who's been a farmer in Alto Paraná state all his life. He grew up surrounded by the Interior Atlantic Forest, listening to the sound of bare-throated bellbirds and saffron toucanets. Before the advent of commercial farming, 85 per cent of eastern Paraguay was forest. Now, with roughly 12 per cent of it still standing, silence fills the air.
'There used to be 2,000 families living here. Now there are only 30, if that,' he continues.
The story of Ramírez's home village of Minga Porá is familiar in South America. It is a story that starts on the dinner tables of the UK and other rich nations, where a hunger for meat and dairy products fuels an ever-rising demand for the industrial farming of animals using high-protein feed. At the bottom of this food chain is the soya plant. Millions of hectares of intensively cultivated soya are gnawing at tropical forests and savannah - displacing farmers and communities, leading to poverty, ill-health and even violence, ruining habitats and exacerbating global warming.
A report by campaign group Friends of the Earth is to be published on Tuesday to focus the attention of UK consumers and the government on the scale of this destruction. It will detail for the first time the cutting, burning and spraying that occurs as a consequence. The report, What's Feeding our Food?, will start a campaign urging the government to take action, ending subsidies and other policies that encourage intensive farming and making sure public money spent on food is not propping up damaging practices.
Across the main soya-producing countries of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay, an area the size of California has been cleared for this one crop, which is exported around the world, mainly to the European Union and China. As the third biggest customer in the European Union, the UK required nearly 1.2m hectares - an area the size of Devon and Cornwall - to generate the 1.7m tonnes of soya beans and 652,000 tonnes of crushed soya meal imported in the most recent year for which figures are available, 2006-7. That was most of the soya used by UK farmers producing 850 million broiler chickens, 10 billion eggs, 10 million turkeys, 4.9 million pigs and 10 million cattle for dairy and beef. Some of this food is exported, but imports, mostly from the EU, are also reared using soya feed, says the report.
'Even though bacon, burgers, milk and cheese may be produced in the UK, most will have come from animals fed on crops grown on the other side of the world,' it says. Nor is the pace of change slackening: this year official estimates judge that soya production will increase in all three major producers. Although demand for meat is largely flat in the UK, it is growing in developing countries.
Attracted by generous offers from Brazilian-born soya growers, Ramírez's neighbours began selling their plots. Soon herbicides began to contaminate the land and water supplies. His own crops began to fail. Worried the chemicals would harm his family, six years ago Ramírez decided to leave.
The destruction wreaked by soya has forced about 90,000 families in the neighbouring state of Caaguazú to leave their homes since the mid-Nineties, according to Javiera Rulli, a biologist for Asunción-based research group BASE, and the editor of a book on soya's expansion in South America. 'The expansion of GM soya is leading to social conflict and mass migration,' she says.
Some problems are easy to measure, particularly the damage to the Amazon and Atlantic forests and the Cerrado savannah. Only two per cent of Paraguay's tropical and subtropical Atlantic forest is left, according to the report - the same proportion of 16th-century woodland remaining in the UK.
Others problems are anecdotal, but the report cites dozens of incidents and statistics to build up a picture of the complex chain of social problems that can be traced back to the growth of the soya farms. Then there are the health impacts of spraying fertilisers and pesticides.
In Paraguay, in the tiny rural hamlet of San Isidro, resident Cipriano Vega says there has been a surge in diseases that were almost unknown in the community previously. Diarrhoea, rashes, headaches, allergies, chest infections and epilepsy are all commonplace now, he alleges.
The community has asked the local government to test the water supply, but to no avail. Without such data, Vega admits that it is difficult to prove a link to the herbicides. But he is in little doubt. 'The year before last, two kids were born without the ability to move their arms or legs, and two people recently died of brain haemorrhages,' he says.
Although it is hard to prove any one person or village has been poisoned by the farming chemicals, the World Health Organisation estimates that, excluding suicide, 355,000 people a year are poisoned by chemicals, and agrochemicals are a major contributor, particularly pesticides. 'Acute exposure can lead to death or serious illness,' particularly when people live close to where chemicals are used, adds the WHO briefing on toxic hazards.
Not everybody accepts, however, that the problems of soya production are as widespread as campaigners claim.
Robert Newbery, the National Farmers Union's chief poultry adviser, said soya products for animals were only part of a global industry that also produced soya oil for processed food, and most crops were planted on existing agricultural land. Newbery said the NFU would support action to tackle wrongdoing by soya farmers, but said they were confident 'the majority is grown ethically'.
Bunge, which with Cargill is one of the biggest soya production companies in the region, also said it had been working for many years, especially in Brazil, to make the industry more sustainable, backing a moratorium on buying soya from newly deforested parts of the Amazon, and working with the Brazilian Ministry of the Environment on promoting best practices among producers. 'A lot has been done, but there is always more to do,' said a spokesman.
Melitón Ramírez now lives in the optimistically named El Triunfo (The Triumph), a rural settlement off the trunk road heading west from Ciudad del Este. He and his fellow subsistence farmers hope to prevent soya's continual encroachment by joining the ownership of their lands together so the soya farmers can't pick them off one by one.
Back in the UK, FoE is calling for the government to axe subsidies that encourage intensive livestock production, lobby the EU to change trade policies and international aid that bolster the industry, and ensure that the £2.2bn a year spent on food by public bodies such as schools and hospitals does not buy products from intensive soya-fed animals.
'Most people don't realise that there's a hidden chain of events linking the meat and dairy they buy to factory farming and to climate change, deforestation and loss of livelihoods in developing countries,' said Clare Oxborrow, FoE's senior food campaigner. 'The government must revolutionise the way that meat and dairy is produced in this country to urgently tackle these impacts while supporting sustainable UK livestock farming.'

A versatile crop

• Cultivated for thousands of years in China, soya was considered one of five holy crops, along with rice, wheat, barley and millet.
• The beans can be eaten as sprouts, milk, tofu, tempeh, sauce or miso.
• Shoyu is the dark brown liquid produced by fermenting soya beans.
• According to a report in the journal Biology of Reproduction in 2004, soya may delay baldness and help to prevent prostate cancer.
• A two-year study by the Institute for Optimum Nutrition and Copenhagen University Hospital found that soy milk reduces bone loss in post-menopausal women.
• Candles made from soya burn for longer than ones made from pure wax.
• Compounds in soya known as phyto-oestrogens or plant oestrogens mimic the female hormone oestrogen, so a woman drinking two glasses of soya milk a day will alter the timing of her menstrual cycle.

Bad tidings

Vietnam is the country most at risk from rising sea levels, according to a new study, as rich nations are being called on to bail out vulnerable populations

•  

• David Adam

Which country will be most affected by the steady rise of the seas? Which country could see more than a tenth of its population displaced, a tenth of its economic power crippled and a tenth of its towns and cities swamped by the end of this century? The answer, which may surprise you, is Vietnam, named by the World Bank as the nation with most to lose as global warming forces the oceans to reclaim the land.
Just a one-metre rise in sea level would flood more than 7% of the country's agricultural land, and wreck nearly 30% of its wetlands, the bank says. And the situation could be worse than that: a one-metre rise in sea level is at the conservative end of the predictions for the year 2100. Some climate experts, including Jim Hansen, director of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, argue that the likely rise should be measured in several metres.
A one-metre rise would still be enough to cause chaos. In a study recently published in the journal Climatic Change, the World Bank says such a rise would impact on about 0.3% of the territory - some 194,000 sq km - of 84 developing countries. That might not sound much, but it would affect about 56 million people. Coastal populations across poorer countries generally do better economically, so the surge in the seas would impact on GDP even more - about 1.3%.
The study, which summarises the findings of a 50-page briefing paper published by the bank last year, comes as campaigners call for rich countries such as the UK to do more to help the developing world adapt to the inevitable effects of climate change.
Heather Coleman, senior climate change policy adviser with Oxfam, says: "Helping vulnerable people cope with the effects of climate change is desperately needed today because they already face increasingly severe and ever-worsening climate change impacts."
The charity released a report last week that called for at least $50bn (£33.85bn) a year to be channelled from international carbon trading schemes into adaptation efforts.
"With a global financial crisis unfolding, these mechanisms could raise enough money from polluters without governments having to dip into national treasuries," Coleman says. "Many negotiators agree that this is one of the more practical approaches. Billions of dollars can be raised and invested to prevent future climate change and to help poor people adapt to the negative impacts of global warming."
Bio-shields
Oxfam says poor countries need help to upgrade national flood early-warning systems, plant mangrove "bio-shields" along coasts to diffuse storm waves, and grow drought-tolerant crops.
The report comes as ministers are due to arrive at UN talks in Poznan, Poland, to continue negotiations on a new global climate treaty to replace the Kyoto protocol. With little progress on new carbon targets expected until the new US administration makes its position clear next year, adaptation could be a key issue at Poznan.
"It is extremely important for negotiators in Poznan to reach a broad understanding about how best to raise adaptation money, because they have paid lip service to the issue for too long," Coleman says. "It is a vital part of the overall deal, a litmus test of how serious rich countries are in tackling the problem.
"Poor people around the world bear the brunt of climate change, and yet they are least responsible for global warming. Even during tempestuous financial times, rich countries can and should help poor people to cope. We can't afford to exchange a short-term saving for a long-term disaster."
If countries fail to adapt to the new reality of climate change, Coleman warns, they would suffer far greater damage from floods, droughts and hurricanes.
Of those, the World Bank study, led by Susmita Dasgupta, of its Development Research Group, says some countries will suffer the effects of sea level rise much worse than others. Severe impactswill be limited to a "relatively small number of countries".
As well as Vietnam, the report highlights likely damage to the Bahamas, which could lose more than a tenth of its territory to a one-metre rise, and Egypt, which faces the flooding of 13% of its agricultural land. Mauritania, Guyana and Jamaica are also among the biggest losers.
In the bank's rankings of the top 10 countries affected by a sea level rise, across six different types of impact, Bangladesh - often associated with rising sea levels - features only once. The country is listed as the tenth most affected by land area, with just over 1% likely to be flooded.
The report says: "The overall magnitudes for the developing world are sobering: within this century, tens of millions of people are likely to be displaced by sea level rise, and the accompanying economic and ecological damage will be severe for many."
It adds: "International resource allocation strategies should recognise the skewed impact distribution we have documented. Some countries will be little affected by sea level rise, while others will be so heavily impacted that their national integrity may be threatened. Given the scarcity of available resources, it would seem sensible to allocate aid according to degree of threat."
The bank says the study is the first of its kind, but admits it is not foolproof. It did not investigate the effects of milder sea level rise, which will be felt in the next few decades. And its methods were too crude to assess the fate of small islands, which are particularly vulnerable. It also fails to take into account adaptation measures put in place over the next century, which would lessen the damages, or storm surges, which would worsen them.
Nevertheless, its central message is clear: "There is little evidence that the international community has seriously considered the implications of sea level rise for population location and infrastructure planning in many developing countries."A separate Oxfam report last month investigated the situation on the ground in Vietnam, in the provinces of Ben Tre and Quang Tri.
Achievements at risk
The charity warned that the effects of climate change threatened Vietnam's development achievements. It is one of the few countries on track to meet most of its millennium development goals by 2015, and it managed to reduce its poverty rate from about 58% of the population to 18% in 2006. "Such impressive achievements are now at risk," Oxfam says. In 2000, Vietnam produced just 0.35% of world greenhouse gas emissions - one of the lowest contributions in the world.
It is not just rising sea levels that pose a threat; higher temperatures, as well as more extremes of weather such as drought and typhoons, will have a "potentially devastating impact on the country's people and economy", the report says.
Some communities are already adapting to changing weather patterns. Rice farmers are harvesting earlier, before the main flooding season, or growing a rice variety with a shorter cycle. But the report found countless cases of poor people across both Ben Tre and Quang Tri, who were ill-equipped to cope with the consequences of the climate changing.
Oxfam says that rich countries must step in - and quickly. "The amounts of investment needed are beyond [Vietnam's] budgetary capacity," it says. "International adaptation finance will be needed in the face of unavoidable impacts."

 

Wetter and wilder: the signs of warming everywhere

In the third part of our series on the eve of the Poznan conference, we look at how climate change is already changing ordinary people's lives from Australia to Brazil

• John Vidal in Immaculada, Brazil

An aerial view of Gonaives, in Haiti, after the passing of tropical storm Hanna. Photograph: Thony Belizaire/AFP/Getty images
Joao da Antonio's eyes are full of tears. If good rains do not come, he says, he will pack his bag, kiss his wife and two children goodbye and join the annual exodus of young men leaving hot, dry rural north-east Brazil for the biofuel fields in the south.
Da Antonio, 19, can earn about £30 a month for 10 hours gruelling work a day cutting sugar cane to make ethanol, and more than a million small farmers like him migrate south for six months of the year because the land can no longer support them. Tens of thousands a year never return, forced to move permanently to Sao Paulo or another of Brazil's cities in search of work.
"Life here is one of suffering," Da Antonio said. "I will do anything to earn some money. None of us want to die, but the lack of water here will kill us. "
Around the world, millions of people like Da Antonio are feeling the force of a changing climate. As UN negotiations towards a global climate deal continue in Poznan, Poland, this week, evidence is emerging of weather patterns in turmoil and the poorest nations disproportionately bearing the brunt of warming.
While rich countries at the talks seek to set up global carbon trading, using financial markets to tackle - and profit from - climate change, poor countries want justice. They are seeking environmental justice: money to adapt their economies to climate changes they did not cause, and technology and resources to allow them to escape poverty while preserving their forests and ecosystems.
The fast and unpredictable shifts in weather are not threats for the future, but happening right now. "The frequency of heatwaves and heavy precipitation is increasing; cyclones are becoming more frequent and intense; more areas are being affected by droughts; and flooding is now more serious," says Sheridan Bartlett, a researcher with the International Institute for Environment and Development in a new study looking at the effects of climate change on children.
"Increasingly unpredictable weather now affects hundreds of millions of farmers, resulting in food and water shortages, more illnesses and water-borne diseases, malnutrition, soil erosion, and disruption to water supplies," she says. Such changes confound the received wisdom of how to live on the land.
North-east Brazil has always known droughts, but they are becoming longer and more frequent, say scientists and farmers. "Climate change is biting. It is much hotter than it used to be and it stays hotter for longer. The rain has become more sporadic. It comes at different times of the year now and farmers cannot tell when to plant," says Lindon Carlos, an agronomist with Brazilian group Acev.
Brazilian scientists have recorded changes in the lifecycles of plants, greater oscillations in temperature and more water shortages, all consistent with the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predictions of a devastating 3-4C rise in temperatures within 60 years if climate change is not halted. "All the research points to it becoming drier [in north-east Brazil]. In the last 30 years temperatures have risen by 1C. There is more very heavy rainfall over short periods and more evaporation," says Eneida Cavalcanti, a desertification specialist at the Joaquim Nabuco foundation in Recife.
On the other side of the world, the changing climate is wreaking havoc in a different way on low-lying and populous Bangladesh. There, government meteorologists this year reported a 10% increase in intensity and frequency in major cyclones hitting the country - two of the most powerful cyclones ever recorded have hit the country in the last three years.
"We are getting too much water in the rainy season and too little in the dry season. All this has implications for food security," says Raja Debashish Roy, Bangladesh's environment minister.
"We are learning about climate change," said Anawarul Islam, chair of the Deara district of about 2,500 people in the far south of the county. "This village is experiencing more rainfall and flooding every year. It has led to more homeless people and more conflict. "
"It's far warmer now," says one villager, Selina. "We do not feel cold in the rainy season. We used to need blankets, but now we don't. There is extreme uncertainty of weather. It makes it very hard to farm and we cannot plan. We have to be more reactive. The storms are increasing and the tides now come right up to our houses."
The balmy Caribbean is also being churned up with increasing frequency and ferocity. This year, the region experienced eight hurricanes and five major hurricanes, the second highest ever, and the hurricane season lasted a record five months.
"A warmer climate poses in some cases insurmountable challenges to the region. We face more hurricanes, coral bleaching and flooding," said Neville Trotz, science adviser to the Caribbean community climate change centre.
Across the Atlantic, in Africa, the theme unfolds further: climate change turning already bad situations in poor countries into potential catastrophe, and driving people to absolute poverty. Alexandre Tique, at Mozambique's national meteorological institute, says: "Analysis of the temperature data gathered in our provincial capitals, where we have meteorological stations that have kept continuous data over the years, shows a clear increase in temperature. Extreme events are becoming more frequent. We now see many more tropical cyclones that bring flooding, destruction and loss of lives."
Other African communities are suffering. In the village of Chikani, in Zambia, the farmers last year prepared their fields for planting in November, as they have always done, but the rains were very late for the third year running.
"We waited, but the first drop didn't fall till December 20. After a day, the rains stopped. Three weeks later, it started to rain again. But then it stopped again after a few days. Since then, we have had no rain. We have never known anything like this before," says Julius Njame.
From the plains of Africa, to mountaintop Nepal, where there is no respite from the weather in flux. Villages like Ketbari expect a small flood to wash off the hills every decade or so, now they seem to be annual and getting more serious.
"We always used to have a little rain each month, but now when there is rain it's very different. It's more concentrated and intense. It means that crop yields are going down," says Tekmadur Majsi, whose lands have been progressively washed away by the Trishuli river.
Nepalese villagers observe the minutiae of a changing climate. Some say that forest pigs now farrow earlier, others that some types of rice and cucumber will no longer grow where they used to. The common thread is that the days are hotter, some trees now flower twice a year and the raindrops are getting bigger.
The anecdotal observations of farmers are backed by scientists who are recording in Nepal some of the fastest increases in temperatures and rainfall anywhere in the world. Many lakes in Nepal and neighbouring Bhutan, which collect glacier meltwater, are said by the UN to be growing so rapidly that they could burst their banks.
Melting glaciers are creating anxiety about water supplies across the Earth. In Tajikistan, at current rates of change, thousands of small glaciers will have disappeared completely by 2050, causing more water to flow in spring followed by what is expected to be a disastrous decline of river flow in most rivers. In Peru, temperature increases have led to a 22% reduction in the total area of its glaciers in the last 35 years.
The developing nations on the climate frontline will argue strongly in Poznan that rich countries should pay to help them adapt to climate change. But development groups such as Oxfam and Tearfund say that almost all the money pledged so far has come out of existing aid funds. With a worldwide recession, many analysts expect rich countries to resist paying more.
The UN has established two funds - the Least Developed Countries and Special Climate Change funds - to raise money for the poorest countries to adapt, but the G8 countries have only pledged $6bn (£4bn). All the money is to be diverted from existing aid money.
"Every [official development assistance] dollar that goes to climate adaptation would mean a dollar less for health and education [programmes] in developing countries," said Antonio Hill, a senior policy adviser at Oxfam.
The scale of what is needed for adaptation is immense. Bangladesh says it needs £250m over three years to adapt, Ethiopia £450m, and other countries similar amounts. Development groups estimate that a minimum $50bn a year is needed worldwide.
"The resources currently available for adaptation are grossly inadequate to meet the needs of the least developed countries who bear the brunt of increased climate variability and unpredictability resulting from climate change," said Bangladesh's finance minister, Mirza Azizul Islam.
Back in north-east Brazil, the Pernambuco state environment minister, Aloysio Coasta, says: "In 20 years' time we could be a desert region. In some communities there are no young people left at all. This is an emergency. Food production is going down in many areas."
Joao da Antonio's wife, Luiza, is resigned to becoming a "drought widow". Clearly distressed, she says: "If there is no water, then he must leave."

 

European leaders clash over pledges on global warming

Germany, Italy and Poland pull in different directions at crunch summit on climate change

• Ian Traynor , Brussels

The EU summit must decide how the bloc will achieve its target of 20% emissions cuts by 2020. Photograph: PA/Haydn West
European leaders gather in Brussels on Thursday for a crunch summit, acutely divided over how to deliver on pledges to combat global warming almost two years after declaring they would show the rest of the world how to tackle climate change.
The EU is split between the poorer east and the wealthy west. Germany says that most of their industries need not pay to pollute, Italy says it cannot afford the ambitious scheme, and Britain says that the package on the table could result in huge windfall profits for companies.
"There is a very big chasm between the various parties," said a senior European diplomat.
Prime ministers and presidents appear to be getting cold feet over key decisions that need to be taken by the weekend to enact laws that will make the climate change package binding for 27 countries.
Failure is not an option, they say. But Polish veto threats, Italian resistance, and German insistence that it will not jeopardise jobs to help save the planet, suggest that the action plan will be diluted. The risk is the EU will draw withering criticism from climate campaigners and signal weakness and indecision to the US, China, India and other key players in the global warming fight.
"It's a question of credibility," said Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission who described the summit as the most important of his five-year term. "It would be a real mistake for Europe to give the signal that we are watering down our position."
A negative outcome to the talks would moreover cast a pall over the latest round of UN negotiations to secure a post-Kyoto treaty to limit global greenhouse gases.
But at talks in Poznan, Poland, yesterday, EU environment commissioner Stavros Dimas, said: "There are a few issues left but I cannot imagine that we're not going to get an agreement on Friday. We are going to deliver the targets."
The EU package represents the most ambitious legislative effort on climate change anywhere which includes four laws that mandate cuts in greenhouse gases by one-fifth by 2020 compared with 1990 levels, reduce energy consumption in Europe by one-fifth by the same deadline and stipulate that 20% of Europe's energy mix comes from renewable sources.
Germany's chancellor Angela Merkel engineered the deal as EU president in March last year. Since then the EU has been bragging about leading the world in the race to keep global temperatures from rising by more than 2C.
It falls to Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, to end his dynamic six months in the EU hot seat with a deal that could see the entire package turned into law before Christmas.
Sarkozy is staring failure in the face. But he is widely viewed as a consummate fixer who may pull it off. The disputes are fundamentally about costs, a disagreement that has become magnified in the current economic climate. While everyone agrees the headline target of 20% cuts in greenhouse gases by 2020 is sacrosanct, the disputes are about how to get there.
The heart of the scheme is the "cap-and-trade" or emissions trading system which is to supply around half of the cuts in greenhouse gases. The ceiling for industrial pollution levels is progressively lowered and industries and companies pay to pollute by buying permits in an auction system.
The pay-to-pollute principle is supposed to kick in from 2013, but is hugely contentious. Germany, in particular, is demanding that 30 industrial sectors be given their permits free of charge. The sectors are responsible for 90% of emissions in the scheme. If the Germans win the argument, the incentives for going greener will be minimised and revenue from the scheme will collapse.
"The Germans have set out an extreme negotiating position," said another diplomat. "They want absolute protection for all of their industry."
The mighty industrial lobbies in Germany are complaining that their global competitiveness will be wrecked if they need to pay for the pollution permits and are threatening to move out of Europe.
Merkel this week said that the summit "must not take decisions that would endanger jobs or investments in Germany. I will see to that."
The dispute between "old" and "new" Europe is also deep, with many seeing it as the biggest obstacle to an agreement.
The poorer post-communist states of central Europe, led by Poland, feel they are getting a raw deal, that they cannot afford the package, that their economic development will be affected and that their costs of living will soar.
Poland, for example, generates more than 90% of its electricity from dirty coal. It wants its power stations exempted from buying the permits until 2019 as well as massive transfers of funds from west to east.
The subsidies are supposed to be funded from the proceeds of the permit auctions. But the pot of money will be small if Germany wins the free permits argument. Britain is leading opposition to this form of subsidy, arguing that transfers of money to central Europe should come from the EU budget.
Silvio Berlusconi, the unpredictable Italian prime minister, has also warned he could veto the package on the grounds that he was not in office when it was agreed in spring last year.
Since then, the financial meltdown and the threat of a deep economic recession have dampened enthusiasm among European leaders.
While Barroso and Gordon Brown emphasise the opportunities for investment and job creation through tackling climate change, the German and Italian leaders are spreading the gloomier message that fighting global warming will cost jobs and growth.
If a deal is struck, it will result from Sarkozy twisting arms in a series of face-to-face meetings with other leaders likely to run into the small hours of Saturday morning.
The deadline is daunting. If the laws are not enacted within a couple of months, the momentum will be lost because the current European parliament ends its term in the spring and a new European commission is due next October.
The Europeans will have forfeited the leadership role on global warming to the incoming Obama administration in Washington.

Fifth of world's coral reefs dead, say marine scientists

Climate change linked to warmer and more acidic seas pose biggest threat to coral survival, says report

A fifth of the world's coral reefs have died or been destroyed and the remainder are increasingly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, a new study says.

The Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network says many surviving reefs could be lost over the coming decades as CO2 emissions continue to increase.

"If nothing is done to substantially cut emissions, we could effectively lose coral reefs as we know them, with major coral extinctions," said Clive Wilkinson of the GCRMN.

The report, released today at UN climate talks in Poznan, Poland, said warmer and more acidic seas posed the biggest threat in future. Other threats include overfishing, pollution and invasive species – as well as natural hazards, such as the earthquake that triggered the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, which forced reefs from the water.

Corals are crucial to the livelihoods of millions of coastal dwellers around the world. The UN's Millennium Ecosystem Assessment says reefs are worth about $30bn annually to the global economy through tourism, fisheries and coastal protection.

"If nothing changes, we are looking at a doubling of atmospheric CO2 in less than 50 years," said Carl Gustaf Lundin, head of the International Union for Conservation of Nature's global marine programme, which is one of the organisations behind the GCRMN. "As this carbon is absorbed, the oceans will become more acidic, which is seriously damaging a wide range of marine life from corals to plankton communities and from lobsters to seagrasses."

The report found that some 45% of the world's reefs are currently healthy, and that some retain the ability to recover after major bleaching events, such as the one caused by the El Niño event in 1998, and to adapt to climate change threats. But, globally, the downward trend of recent years has not been reversed.

David Obura, chair of the IUCN climate change and coral reefs working group, said: "Ten years after the world's biggest coral bleaching event, we know that reefs can recover – given the chance. Unfortunately, impacts on the scale of 1998 will reoccur in the near future, and there's no time to lose if we want to give reefs and people a chance to suffer as little as possible."