disaster

The Cost of Doing Nothing :: or Building Up Resilience In Communities

 

 

In its latest report, The Cost of Doing Nothing, the IFRC presents an analysis showing that if no urgent action is taken now, the number of people in need of humanitarian assistance annually due to the climate crisis could double by 2050. Similarly, financial costs could balloon to 20 billion US dollars per year.

 

In contrast with this pessimistic scenario, the report also shows that, if appropriate climate adaptation measures are taken now, these figures could also stabilize, and even drop. By investing in climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction – building up resilience in communities, countries and regions at risk – and by improving early warning and anticipatory humanitarian action, the world can avoid a future marked by escalating suffering and ballooning response costs.

 

Greta Thunberg calls out ‘forces of greed’ in surprise Glastonbury climate speech

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 Greta Thunberg called out “the forces of greed” as she made a surprise climate speech at Glastonbury on Saturday (25 June). The 19-year-old campaigner, from Sweden, spoke from the Pyramid Stage in front of a backdrop that shows how global temperature have risen. “We are at the beginning of a climate and ecological emergency. 
This is not the new normal, this crisis will continue to get worse… until we prioritise people and planet over profits and greed,” she said. 

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How Extreme Weather Is Shrinking the Planet

 

In 1988, George H. W. Bush, running for President, promised that he would fight “the greenhouse effect with the White House effect.” He did not, nor did his successors, nor did their peers in seats of power around the world, and so in the intervening decades what was a theoretical threat has become a fierce daily reality. As this essay goes to press, California is ablaze. A big fire near Los Angeles forced the evacuation of Malibu, and an even larger fire, in the Sierra Nevada foothills, has become the most destructive in California’s history. After a summer of unprecedented high temperatures and a fall “rainy season” with less than half the usual precipitation, the northern firestorm turned a city called Paradise into an inferno within an hour, razing more than ten thousand buildings and killing at least sixty-three people; more than six hundred others are missing. The authorities brought in cadaver dogs, a lab to match evacuees’ DNA with swabs taken from the dead, and anthropologists from California State University at Chico to advise on how to identify bodies from charred bone fragments. Read More