Climate change: Why poor nations suffer most

Should rich countries pay reparations for global warming? said Annie Lowrey in NYTimes.com. Representatives of about 130 developing nations raised the provocative question during last week’s climate talks in Warsaw, held days after Typhoon Haiyan slammed into the Philippines, killing thousands. The tragedy underscored a “cruel truth about climate change: It will hit the world’s poorest the hardest.” Dwelling in rickety houses in hot, equatorial climates, the poor often are massed in low-lying flood zones or on the edge of deserts. “Hurricanes and floods will wash communities away. Drought will crush farms and increase hunger.” Meanwhile, these poorer nations often “contribute the least to global warming,” said Pati Poblete in SFGate.com. The Philippines emits 0.9 metric tons of carbon per capita, compared with America’s 17.6 tons. Yet it still bears “the brunt of the burden.”

The typhoon has sparked “the usual round of climate alarmist hysterics,” said Greg Conterio in WesternFreePress.com. But the frequency or intensity of typhoons has nothing to do with climate change. Cyclone experts say that both typhoons and hurricanes are influenced by the difference in the temperature of sea-level air and tropospheric air, not the temperature of the water itself. So a rise in average global temperature would have no effect. And let’s not forget “the elephant in the room”: Since 1998, there’s been no discernible warming, and sea-level rise has also stopped. Climate change alarmists love to play the blame game, but the evidence just isn’t there.

Actually, the evidence is there—in dollars and cents, said Lindsay Abrams in Salon.com. Even if you want to ignore mountains of evidence that climate change is real, global losses from extreme weather have quadrupled from the 1980s to $200 billion a year, according to a new World Bank report. Americans are seeing the proof of this devastation firsthand, said Jeffrey Sachs in The Washington Post.Recent years have brought raging wildfires that have devastated the West, prolonged droughts that have wilted the Southwest, and fierce storms that have inundated the East Coast. Yet the U.S. is one of several developed nations resisting strict emissions limits or payments to Third World nations. But in coming years, “another spate of catastrophes” could provide “the tipping point.” The next big political movement may be an “environmental revolt.”

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