Deadly storms, deadly addiction

The US alone is responsible for a quarter of the world's carbon dioxide emissions.  If we carry the smoking metaphor forward, the entire world is suffering from the passive smoke of America's fossil fuel habit, and the symptoms of cancer are coming soon, if they're not already here.

The American people are also suffering from their government's failure to take urgent steps to curb global warming. Katrina and Rita are stark reminders of the fact that the American taxpayer is being asked to cover the cost of the Bush administration's inaction on oil dependency not only at the petrol pump, but in uninsured liabilities for extreme-weather related damages as well.

For information on how to help the victims of Katrina and Rita, check out www.katrinalists.net. Any contribution (even 10 minutes to make some phone calls) can help.

To find out more about how you can personally help the fight against climate change, visit our Take Action page.

Most climate models and theory predict an increase in intensity of tropical storms as sea surface temperatures increase. There are a number of factors involved, but higher ocean temperatures strengthen hurricanes. 

The frequency of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes worldwide has nearly doubled over the past 35 years, even though the total number of hurricanes, including weaker ones, has dropped since the 1990s. Katrina was a Category 4 storm when it hit land.  Rita was a Category 5 on the 22nd of September.

No one disputes that we are currently experiencing an increase in tropical storm intensity. No one disputes that there are multi-decadal cycles of peaks and troughs in storm activity. The debate about the link with climate change continues, but two recent papers make a compelling case linking the current peak with climate change. One focuses on the changes in the number, duration, and intensity of tropical cyclones, while the other charts their increasing destructiveness over the past 30 years.

There is no lack of evidence that human-induced climate change is underway. The impacts are being felt from Alaska to Florida to sub-Saharan Africa, India, China and the melting Russian tundra. In the four weeks that the world's press has put a magnifying glass on Katrina and Rita, typhoons in Asia and floods in Europe and India have left ruin and death in their wake. In a warming world, more storms and more destructive storms like Rita and Katrina are in our future, but so are increased outbreaks of malaria, the prospect of massive crop failures, desertification, and sea level rise.

In the short and medium term, here's what we can expect: 

• Sea level rise due to melting glaciers and ice caps and the thermal expansion of the oceans as global temperature increases  
  
• The European summer temperatures which killed more than 30,000 people in the heat wave of 2003 will be 'average' summer temperatures before mid-century.
  
• Massive releases of greenhouse gases from melting permafrost and dying forests.   
• A high risk of more extreme weather events such as heat waves, droughts and floods. Already, the global incidence of drought has doubled over the past 30 years.   
• Severe impacts on a regional level. For example, in Europe, river flooding will increase over much of the continent, and in coastal areas the risk of flooding, erosion and wetland loss will increase substantially.   
• Natural systems, including glaciers, coral reefs, mangroves, arctic ecosystems, alpine ecosystems, boreal forests, tropical forests, prairie wetlands and native grasslands, will be severely threatened.   
• An increase in existing risks of species extinction and biodiversity loss.   
• The greatest impacts will be on the poorer countries least able to protect themselves from rising sea levels, spread of disease and declines in agricultural production in the developing countries of Africa, Asia and the Pacific.

Longer term catastrophic effects if warming continues:   

• Greenland and Antarctic ice sheet melting. Unless checked, warming from emissions may trigger the irreversible meltdown of the Greenland ice sheet in the coming decades, which would add up to seven meters of sea-level rise, over some centuries; there is new evidence that the rate of ice discharge from parts of the Antarctic mean that it is also at risk of meltdown.   
• The Atlantic Gulf Stream current slowing, shifting or shutting down, having dramatic effects in Europe, and disrupting the global ocean circulation system;   
• Catastrophic releases of methane from the oceans leading to rapid increases in methane in the atmosphere and consequent warming.
  
 

While everyone on the planet is at risk from the changes that will occur from global warming, impacts are felt more severely by the most vulnerable in any society, including the sick, aged and poor. 

And the developing world will suffer far more than those who can afford to subsidize rebuilding.

If the evacuation of Louisiana and Texas looked difficult, imagine the entire country of Bangladesh having to flee rising waters into Pakistan. Imagine the island nations of the Pacific having to find new homes. 

"Rita and Katrina are merely warnings of what our world will look like if we fail to treat climate change as the emergency it is.  They're the calm before the storm, and unless the US government wakes up to the danger and responds, we'll need an evacuation plan for planet Earth," said Greenpeace International Executive Director Gerd Leipold.