7 May 2016, The Conversation, Sea-level rise has claimed five whole islands in the Pacific: first scientific evidence. Sea-level rise, erosion and coastal flooding are some of the greatest challenges facing humanity from climate change. Recently at least five reef islands in the remote Solomon Islands have been lost completely to sea-level rise and coastal erosion, and a further six islands have been severely eroded. These islands lost to the sea range in size from one to five hectares. They supported dense tropical vegetation that was at least 300 years old. Nuatambu Island, home to 25 families, has lost more than half of its habitable area, with 11 houses washed into the sea since 2011. This is the first scientific evidence, published in Environmental Research Letters, that confirms the numerous anecdotal accounts from across the Pacific of the dramatic impacts of climate change on coastlines and people. A warning for the world Previous studies examining the risk of coastal inundation in the Pacific region have found that islands can actually keep pace with sea-level riseand sometimes even expand. However, these studies have been conducted in areas of the Pacific with rates of sea level rise of 3-5 mm per year – broadly in line with the global average of 3 mm per year. For the past 20 years, the Solomon Islands have been a hotspot for sea-level rise. Here the sea has risen at almost three times the global average, around 7-10 mm per year since 1993. This higher local rate is partly the result of natural climate variability. These higher rates are in line with what we can expect across much of the Pacific in the second half of this century as a result of human-induced sea-level rise. Many areas will experience long-term rates of sea-level rise similar to that already experienced in Solomon Islands in all but the very lowest-emission scenarios. Read More here
Category Archives: Equity & Social justice
3 May 2016, New York times, Resettling the First American ‘Climate Refugees’. ISLE DE JEAN CHARLES, La. — Each morning at 3:30, when Joann Bourg leaves the mildewed and rusted house that her parents built on her grandfather’s property, she worries that the bridge connecting this spit of waterlogged land to Louisiana’s terra firma will again be flooded and she will miss another day’s work. Ms. Bourg, a custodian at a sporting goods store on the mainland, lives with her two sisters, 82-year-old mother, son and niece on land where her ancestors, members of the Native American tribes of southeastern Louisiana, have lived for generations. That earth is now dying, drowning in salt and sinking into the sea, and she is ready to leave. With a first-of-its-kind “climate resilience” grant to resettle the island’s native residents, Washington is ready to help. “Yes, this is our grandpa’s land,” Ms. Bourg said. “But it’s going under one way or another.” In January, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced grants totaling $1 billion in 13 states to help communities adapt to climate change, by building stronger levees, dams and drainage systems. One of those grants, $48 million for Isle de Jean Charles, is something new: the first allocation of federal tax dollars to move an entire community struggling with the impacts of climate change. The divisions the effort has exposed and the logistical and moral dilemmas it has presented point up in microcosm the massive problems the world could face in the coming decades as it confronts a new category of displaced people who have become known as climate refugees. Read More here
5 April 2016, The Conversation, What to do when machines take our jobs? Give everyone free money for doing nothing. It was Groucho Marx who said, “While money can’t buy happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own form of misery.” Quite true, but what if there’s no money coming in from work because your job’s been taken over by a machine? Low wage earners appear to be most at risk from automation. In February 2016, the Council of Economic Advisers (an agency within the Executive Office of the US President) issued an alarming report predicting that an 80% or greater chance exists for people on basic incomes of US$20 per hour or less to be made redundant by smart machines in the foreseeable future. After them come the mid-range workers. Clearly, we need strategies to address any job losses arising though increases in automation. Theoretically, just about any job that can be described as a process could be done by a computer-controlled machine. In practice though, many employers will decide that keeping a human in a job is preferable to automating it. These are jobs that involve some degree of empathy. Imagine telling a robot doctor what ails you in response to “please state the nature of your medical emergency”. Free money for all – seriously? But what about those people whose jobs are lost to automation? What if new jobs aren’t created to replace them? What are they to do if they can’t earn a living anymore? This time it’s Karl Marx, not Groucho, who comes to mind with the idea of giving people a universal basic income (UBI). This is raised as a possible remedy to any misery caused by rising unemployment from job automation. Put simply, a UBI is a pump-priming minimum income that is unconditionally granted to all on an individual basis, without any means test or work requirement. It eliminates the poverty traps that the poor fall into when welfare payments have many conditions and are administered by large and inflexible bureaucracies. Read More here
25 March 2016, BIEN, Universal basic income: a search for alternative models. With the expressed commitment of the Prime minister Juha Sipilä’s centre-to-right Government to conduct an experiment to evaluate the effects of a basic income system, the idea of a universal basic income has come to the forefront of the Finnish political discourse. Discussions centring on the idea of a universally guaranteed basic income have a long and varied history in the Finnish political arena, and several initiatives and practical models have been made public since the 1980s. A recent working paper published by the Finnish Social Insurance Institution (Kela) charts the history of the basic income debate and outlines solutions put forward for a true basic income system or one that bears some features of a universal basic income. The working paper will be used as background to analysis preparing the ground for the planned basic income experiment. An idea with a long history The working paper begins by presenting the history of ideas behind the discussion on a universal basic income or citizen’s wage, the latter being a term which is often used alongside ’basic income’ in the Finnish debate. Read More here