Societal Impacts of Climate Change

I have no doubt that the fundamental

sort of particularly on

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I love the years of living dangerously

because they tackled one of the main

myths about climate change head-on one

of the main myths is that climate change

is a distant issue its distant in space

it's only about the polar bear not about

us and its distant in time it's only

about future generations not about us

this is a myth that isn't just among

people who don't think climate change is

real even many people who do view it as

oh it's just you know we'll deal with it

in the future the years of living

dangerously said no we are dealing with

it right now whether you like it or not

and let us show you the faces of the

people around the world who are dealing

with it so we're not talking like we

were 50 years ago 40 years ago I like

this will be a problem it is a problem

all the systems we have in place

agriculture urban environment everything

we've set up has all been predicated on

this very very stable climate which

we're now starting to tinker with you

know fiddle with the dials in an

uncontrolled way the science is looking

at the impact of that on the climate

lead back on humans impact on sea level

the impact on precipitation it's going

to be the impact on food production it's

going to be the impact of where people

live right there is a pretty serious

impact it's gonna be impact on

biodiversity which in my opinion has

been bigger than sea level rise right

there the decay of species unfortunately

it's not the people who are causing the

problems that will be most affected so

you know America and ourselves the

highest emitters per capita but it's the

people and the developing nature's up

regions that will be affected most so

coral Keira bass is already having

saltwater intrusion inundation and sea

level rise and they're not putting any

greenhouse gas emissions

see you can imagine that if you're on a

low-lying Pacific island well actually a

small amount of sea level makes a

massive difference to your livelihood

combine that with you know a high tide

or a storm surge and then you know we

get regions of the world that are very

vulnerable to these kind of combined

events we are very very vulnerable as a

species to relatively small changes in

sea level there are countries like

Bangladesh the Netherlands and all the

atolls in South Pacific which would be

absolutely devastated from our sea level

rise of more than a meter millions and

millions of people are set to be

displaced with our low-end projections

of sea level rise if we start tracking

at higher ends because of these rapid

melting of the land ice over Greenland

and Antarctic regions you could have you

know even more rapid with our

displacement populations the sea level

rise around about a meter it suggested

would displace potentially up to 200

million people it's very clear that if

you push slowly on the climate a lot of

the things that we have built hit sudden

thresholds either the city is hiding

behind the levee and the water stays

just below the levee during the storm or

just above and that little change can

make a huge difference to whether your

city is livable or not in the next few

weeks I think in the tropics there's

there's where you're gonna see the first

real impacts on people because the

people who are living right downstream

below the glaciers and there are large

numbers of people living downstream so

what's happening to those glaciers

become extremely important what glaciers

do is apparent to sponges basically so

in the winter that they they hold that

snow the Falls

and then they release that snow in the

dry tongue beer which is typically to

someone so I play sisters they tend to

even out the annual precipitation that

falls and essentially allow areas to

carry on to have agriculture for example

in the summer when otherwise there'd be

areas that are very very dry if you go

to a country like Peru seventy percent

of the tropical glaciers on earth are in

Peru the Andes approve here you have a

country of thirty four million people

over fifty percent live in the desert on

the west coast of Peru depending on

rivers that originate in the glaciers up

the Andes seventy six percent of their

electricity comes from hydropower the

water coming from those glaciers if

you're working in Tibet there are 46,000

glaciers there and you take a river like

the Indus River it flows through China

through Pakistan and through India all

nuclear power of countries all depend on

that river for its water supplies so

these are these are plays of

geopolitical hotspots in the future I

think perhaps the biggest impact is on

agriculture because the they think of

the or the prairies that stretch east of

the Rockies there's huge areas that fed

by the by the rivers that flow from the

Rockies so you could imagine if we're

trying to feed a global population and

there are

crops like wheat for example which are

you know don't have a high tolerance to

certain high thresholds then we could be

in serious trouble those that don't have

access to things like air conditioning

or public health infrastructure if you

get a heatwave in those sorts of areas

people get sick or the elderly generally

get really sick after a heatwave if they

don't have the public infrastructure to

cope with that more people will

unfortunately be killed so when you look

at health and you look at morbidity and

mortality rates they increase

substantially during heatwave events and

in fact at Europe in 2003 there was

somewhere around about 30,000 to 50,000

excess deaths due to the heat wave some

of my research is in East Africa we are

seeing climate change impacts in those

places and they're scary you see what

happens to people when the distributions

of malaria carrying mosquitoes expands

it kills them

it's not an academic issue for me this

is a deeply ethically based issue

climate change in the really short term

is expensive but not hugely so and as

the climate change gets bigger as we

look farther into the future the price

goes up the damages go up at very

crudely each degree of warming costs

more than the previous degree the first

degree was almost in the noise of what

we were used to it just not very

expensive but we've used that one and

the second degree will cost a little

more it's moving outside of your

experience is starting to stress things

and we've committed to that but very

broadly the third degree cost more than

the second and by the fourth and the

fifth now sea level rise is going to get

huge we have real problems with crops

which may be bumping up against

biochemical limits and the ability to

feed ourselves gets a little bit

worrisome and so by the time you start

running to the third the fourth the

fifth degree the cost of damages the

dangers go way up

but we're arguing now about the third

degree because we've basically formed

almost all of the first

and we really have committed to the

second line there are consequences in

terms of human life for this there are

consequences in terms of extinction

rates for this there are consequences in

terms of ecosystem services every single

day that goes by that we don't begin to

address these problems the problem gets

worse more expensive more immediate and

in some parts of the world has a toll in

terms of people dying and for me this is

just like fundamental we don't have time

to muck about with this this is not an

ivory tower argument this is one where

the consequences are real we have to

really try and wake people up to realize

that this is happening it's very very

serious but we can solve it and we have

to do so not because you know it's going

to cut the economy but because it's the

planet we live on it and so people that

we love they're going to be effect

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you