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Indonesia might need a new capital because of climate change

Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, has its fair share of problems: terrible traffic that can turn a 25 mile drive into a two hour endeavor, dangerous air pollution, and the largest uncovered landfill in Southeast Asia. And now, with climate change in the mix, 10 million people live in one of the fastest sinking cities in the world.

Jakarta, built next to the Java Sea with 13 rivers criss-crossing the city, is sinking as fast as 9 inches a year in some neighborhoods. The problem is compounded by unlicensed groundwater extraction, which empties aquifers and causes the ground to cave. Right now, about half the city is below sea level. By 2050, if emissions aren’t drastically cut, 95 percent of Northern Jakarta is expected to be submerged.

Indonesia’s likely re-elected President Joko Widodo’s solution? Change the capital. In a closed cabinet meeting on Monday, Widodo made the decision to move the executive branch and associated ministries and parliament to a new city. Which city? He opened the discussion on Twitter:

“Jakarta now bears two burdens at once: as a center of government and public services as well as a business center,” Widodo tweeted. “Where do you think Indonesia’s capital should be?”’

Widodo isn’t the first to suggest relocating Indonesia’s capital. In 1957, Indonesia’s first president, Sukarno, suggested that very thing. Every so often, presidents have brought up the issue to no avail, to the point where Indonesian residents are skeptical that the move will ever occur. And many are not sure they want it to, either.

“You don’t solve a problem by just moving it away,” Elisa Sutanudjaja, director of the Rujak Center for Urban Studies, told The Guardian. “Jakarta is quite similar to Tokyo in the 1960s, with its land subsidence, flooding, natural disasters and overcrowding. If you really want to solve the problem then they should tackle it, not just move it.”

That being said, this might be the time it finally happens. Things are approaching a tipping point, with natural disasters like last week’s floods increasing in regularity and severity. As Jakarta’s population continues to grow, and unsanctioned water extraction and climate change pull Jakarta below sea level, it’s about time that something happens.

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Here’s what everyone gets wrong about the climate report

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When reporters combed through the recently released National Climate Assessment, searching for news, they flagged the potential damage to the U.S. economy. Climate change could “knock as much as 10 percent off the size of the American economy by century’s end,” said a headline in the New York Times, and other outlets picked up the claim. When a reporter asked President Donald Trump about climate change devastating the economy, he responded, “I don’t believe it.”

The thing is, Trump’s statement is worth a second look. (Crazy, I know). That 10 percent projection comes from an outlier data point on a graph in the report. It’s what happens if we fail to reduce emissions at all, everything else also goes wrong, and temperatures rise 15 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s the worst-case scenario. A more reasonable person might be excused for saying he doesn’t believe the worst-case scenario will come to pass.

That said, even if you don’t focus on the 10 percent blow to gross domestic product — the rightmost point below — the rest of the graph suggests that climate change will almost certainly make the country poorer by 2100, especially if we fail to reduce emissions.

And it could be worse. Marshall Burke, a Stanford scientist, has published estimates where climate change shrinks the U.S. by more than 20 percent by 2100. Unmitigated climate change could squeeze the economy down between 1 and 20 percent by 2100, compared to what it would have been without warming. It’s all within the realm of possibility.

Why the huge range in these projections? Because there are huge unknowns, said Burke. “If you are looking at the historical record about how temperature affects agricultural production, for instance, there’s noise in the data, there’s sampling error, there’s a lot of uncertainty. And then there’s also a lot of uncertainty in how much warming we are going to see.”

These projections also mask the likely pain of economic contraction by lumping it all together into one number, said Gary Yohe, an economist at Wesleyan who reviewed the report for the National Academy of Science. In fact, people living in the Southeast are likely to get poorer while people in the North may actually benefit.

Solomon Hsian et al.

The point is to avoid fixating on any particular number, like 10 percent, Yohe said. “I’m afraid that the report will be dismissed, not because it’s 2 percent, or 10 percent but because 2100 seems really far away. Who cares? How do we refocus back to something people will understand? People are looking out their windows and seeing climate change. People look at their TVs and see California burning. These aren’t projections or estimates, they are observable facts.”

So what should we focus on? Let’s look at what the report actually says: Unless we really get our act together “climate change is projected to impose substantial damages to the U.S. economy, human, health, and the environment.”

And you don’t need to wait for the projections to come true. The report, and Grist, have documented dozens of ways in which climate change is already causing financial distress, right now. In the Southeast residents in 60 percent of cities are already paying for more air conditioning as heat waves increase, and “high tide flooding already poses daily risks to businesses, neighborhoods, infrastructure, transportation, and ecosystems in the region.” In the West, a 2006 heat wave caused some “600 deaths, 16,000 emergency room visits, 1,100 hospitalizations in California, and economic costs of $5.4 billion.” In Oklahoma and Texas, flooding “caused an estimated $2.6 billion in damage in 2015.” Last year, climate-related disasters cost the United States over $300 billion. The report predicts the bill will keep rising.

We can argue about whether climate change will someday “devastate the economy,” but there’s no arguing with the fact that we are already spending heaps of money on crap that we might have avoided.

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Here’s what everyone gets wrong about the climate report

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This Chart Shows Which Countries Are the Most Screwed by Climate Change

Mother Jones

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Verisk Maplecroft

One of the cruel ironies of climate change is that its impacts tend to fall hardest on the countries least equipped to manage them.

When drought or sea level rise strike the United States, communities at least have access to federal aid, top scientific expertise, public investment in expensive climate-ready infrastructure, and the like. But some of the most extreme effects of global warming are headed for developing countries—drought wiping out crops in East Africa, or catastrophic hurricanes pounding Southeast Asia—that don’t have access to those resources.

New research from Maplecroft, a UK-based risk consultancy, paints a pictures of where vulnerability to climate change is most pressing. Their analysis drew on three criteria: exposure to extreme events, based on the latest meteorological science; sensitivity to impacts (i.e., does a country have other sources of income and food supply if agriculture takes a hit?); and adaptive capacity—are the country’s government and social institutions prepared to work under adverse climate conditions and help citizens adapt to them?

Unsurprisingly, Africa and Southeast Asia ranked the lowest, while Scandinavian countries ranked the highest. (While definitely at risk from sea level rise, countries such as Norway and Sweden have rich, highly functional governments to manage adaptation.) The major global climate talks in Paris are coming up in just a couple weeks; the chart above makes it clear why it’s so important for big players like the US and China to work closely with delegations from developing countries on solutions that will provide immediate support and relief.

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This Chart Shows Which Countries Are the Most Screwed by Climate Change

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The Most Beautiful Animal You’ll Never See

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Maybe baby steps will help, but the world needs a lot more than either the United States or China is offering to combat the illegal traffic in wildlife, a nearly $20-billion-a-year business that adds up to a global war against nature. As the headlines tell us, the trade has pushed various rhinoceros species to the point of extinction and motivated poachers to kill more than 100,000 elephants since 2010.

Last month China announced that it would ban ivory imports for a year, while it “evaluates” the effectiveness of the ban in reducing internal demand for ivory carvings on the current slaughter of approximately 100 African elephants per day. The promise, however, rings hollow following a report in November (hotly denied by China) that Chinese diplomats used President Xi Jinping’s presidential plane to smuggle thousands of pounds of poached elephant tusks out of Tanzania.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration has launched its own well-meaning but distinctly inadequate initiative to curb the trade. Even if you missed the roll-out of that policy, you probably know that current trends are leading us toward a planetary animal dystopia, a most un-Disneyesque world in which the great forests and savannas of the planet will bid farewell to the species earlier generations referred to as their “royalty.” No more King of the Jungle, while Dorothy’s “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!” will truly be over the rainbow. And that’s just for starters.

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The Most Beautiful Animal You’ll Never See

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Chicagoans fight the Kochs and their petcoke

Chicagoans fight the Kochs and their petcoke

Southeast Environmental Task Force

When tar-sands oil is refined, a nasty byproduct called petroleum coke, or petcoke, is produced — thick, dusty gunk that is increasingly being stored in huge piles along Midwestern rivers. On Chicago’s Southeast Side, unfortunate neighbors have been fighting to get rid of three such piles, noting that the petcoke blows over their communities and even into their homes. But they’ve failed, at least for now.

The Chicago City Council on Wednesday voted to ban new petcoke storage facilities, but the old ones will be allowed to remain in place and uncovered for up to two years. City lawyers said stricter proposed regulations might not stand up in court. The Times of Northwest Indiana reports:

Aldermen voted overwhelmingly in favor of a measure by 10th Ward Alderman John Pope that will require petcoke to be stored in indoor structures within two years. …

Currently, Beemsterboer Slag Corp. and KCBX Terminals Co. are the only companies storing petcoke within Chicago, both at sites along the Calumet River in the 10th Ward. …

2nd Ward Alderman Robert Fioretti, the lone alderman to vote against the petcoke measure, said he … thinks city officials, in creating this measure, were more concerned with protecting the business interests of Beemsterboer and KCBX than they were in looking out for city residents.

Activists are not backing off — they’re filing an unusual lawsuit that directly targets the Koch brothers, owners of KCBX Terminals, among other parties. Climate Progress has the story:

Two environmental groups on Monday sent a letter to billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, saying they intend to file a lawsuit against them for polluting a primarily low-income area of Chicago with thick, black, oily dust.

The letter sent by the Southeast Environmental Task Force (SETF) and Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) gave official 90-day notice of intent to sue the Koch brothers and 10 of their companies, including the KCBX Terminals Company, in federal court. The lawsuit will seek to hold them liable for the harmful effects of pollution caused by coal and petroleum coke, or petcoke …

It will likely be difficult to hold the Koch brothers individually responsible for the alleged actions of their large companies. Suing company officers requires a legal maneuver called “piercing the corporate veil,” a tactic used in “exceptional situations” when it can be proven that the officers themselves were the main drivers of the alleged violation. Because a large corporation like Koch Industries has many levels of decision-making, it won’t be easy to prove in court that the brothers were at the helm of each one.

Meanwhile, officials at the city and state level are also filing suit to stop the petcoke pollution, as the Chicago Tribune reports:

The mayor’s office also has joined Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan and Gov. Pat Quinn in fighting two companies that store petcoke and coal on the Southeast Side.

KCBX Terminals, a company controlled by industrialists Charles and David Koch, faces a lawsuit filed by Madigan and [Mayor Rahm] Emanuel that accuses the company of violating air pollution laws … Another state and city lawsuit urges a Cook County judge to cite KCBX for violating water-quality and open-dumping laws by failing to prevent petcoke and coal from washing into the Calumet River

Detroiters managed to get rid of their petcoke piles last year. Maybe Chicagoans should call them for a little advice.


Source
City Council OKs petcoke restrictions, The Times
Koch Brothers To Face Lawsuit Over ‘Swirling’ Chicago Petcoke Pollution, ClimateProgress
Chicago stops short of petroleum coke ban, Chicago Tribune

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Chicagoans fight the Kochs and their petcoke

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The 32 most alarming charts from the government’s climate change report

The 32 most alarming charts from the government’s climate change report

Just reading about the government’s massive new report outlining what climate change has in store for the U.S. is sobering. In brief: temperature spikes, drought, flooding, less snow, less permafrost. But if you really want to freak out, you should check out the graphs, charts, and maps.

For the more visually oriented bunker builders out there, here are the 32 most alarming images from the 1,200-page draft report. (Click any of them to embiggen.)

Things will be different.
Analysis suggests that temperatures could rise as much as 11 degrees by the end of the century. On this chart, note the lines labelled SRES A2 and SRES B1. Those are the two greenhouse gas emission scenarios used as worst- and best-case scenarios in many of the charts that follow.

It’s possible that sea levels could only rise eight inches. It is also possible that they could rise over six-and-a-half feet.

Over the past 30 years, we’ve already seen hundreds of billion-dollar weather disasters — heavily centered on the South and Southeast.

We will be hot.
Over the past century, temperature changes have varied by region.

Depending on the emissions scenario, we could see an average of four degrees of temperature increase — or 10 degrees across the country.

Under the worse-case emissions scenario, annual days over 100 degrees will spike in the Plains, Southwest, and Southeast.

The whole country will see more frost-free days — but particularly in the Southwest.

We will be wet.
Precipitation has been increasing across the country …

… but that increase isn’t uniform.

We will also be dry.
Under a higher-emissions scenario, the southwest will see far less rain.

Drought will increase significantly …

… and we’ll see significant increases in water withdrawal.

Very heavy precipitation — far bigger storms — will increase dramatically in the Northeast.

Flooding in the northern Plains and Northeast will increase.

We will be itchy and sneezy and diseased.
Carbon dioxide increases will lead to more pollen, exacerbating allergies.

The natural range of ticks will expand.

Alaska will become a totally different state.
Under the higher emissions scenario, Alaska could see temperature increases of nearly 12 degrees.

That increased warmth will mean faster thawing of the permafrost, which is very, very bad news.

We will need boats, if we live on the coast.
The U.S. has seen huge population growth on its coasts, which is bad news.

Sea-level rise will affect different areas to different degrees — but note the map at lower right. On the Georgia coast, “hundred year” floods could happen annually.

In New York, which has seen sea rise quickly …

… the boundaries suggesting where a hundred year flood would stop will keep moving inland.

North Carolina will see rising whatever-they-call-its, too.

Across the country, airports built near the ocean, often on fill, will become more subject to flooding.

Power plants in California will be threatened by flooding.

Seattle will see huge areas of the city made vulnerable to flooding and surge. (You can read the details here.)

Or, in summary:
Here’s what you can expect depending on where in the country you live.

If you really want to sleep poorly tonight, open the full report and search for your state. If the temperature is only expected to go up five degrees, consider yourself lucky.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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